The Prelude

The Prelude is the name of Wordsworth's great semi-autobiographical poem. The earliest manuscripts, containing material that later formed part of the poem, date from 1798, but Wordsworth continued to work on it for the rest of his life.

The earliest versions differ quite significantly from the published version. The poem was not published until after Wordsworth's death in 1850 and was given its name by his wife Mary. The first complete version of the poem, however, dates from 1805 and the manuscript is on display in The Wordsworth Museum & Art Gallery.

As many of Wordsworth's friends read the poem long before it was published, it is possible that this is the very book that was passed from hand to hand. The manuscript in the museum is open on a page in the hand writing of Dorothy Wordsworth, although the corrections are by Wordsworth himself. This then, was very much a working document and gives us a fascinating insight into the way Wordsworth continually revised the poem.

The Prelude: 'Spots of time'

There are in our existence spots of time,
Which with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating Virtue, whence, ... our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired

^{(Book XI, ls 258-278)}

'Spots of time' for Wordsworth are past experiences through which he can trace his own development, as a man and as a poet, and which continue to resonate with new meanings many years after the events themselves. Many of Wordsworth's 'spots of time' arise out of moments of activity, such as ice-skating, horse riding or climbing a mountain. Others come in response to a particular feeling, such as guilt after stealing a rowing boat; or a time of emotional intensity, such as the death of his father.

The death of Wordsworth's father (Book XI, ls 346-389)
This happened during the school holidays, when Wordsworth was 13. Waiting impatiently for the horses to take him home for the holidays, the young Wordsworth has no idea of what is to come. Many years later, however, the sights and sounds of his wait become entwined with the memory of the death of his father:

| And afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,
And all the business of the elements,
The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,
And the bleak music of that old stone wall
All these were spectacles and sounds to which
I often would repair and thence would drink

Stealing a boat (Book I, ls 372-427)
This spot of time is a good example of the way in which Wordsworth projects his own feelings onto a landscape. His feeling of 'troubled pleasure' on stealing the boat is given substance by the looming mountains, which eventually become 'the trouble of my dreams'.

I struck, and struck again,
And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff,
Rose up between me and the stars, and still,
With measured motion, like a living thing,
Strode after me.

Read the full episode: Boat-stealing

Ice-skating (Book I, ls 452-489)
This is a memory from Wordsworth's school days. It describes ice-skating on frozen Esthwaite Water at night. The centre of the experience is the way in which the people and the landscape are all involved:

So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din,
Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees, and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron

Read the full episode: Ice-skating

Furness Abbey (Book II, ls 99-144)
In another school boy adventure, Wordsworth and his friends hire horses and race them along the sands near Furness Abbey. There is contrast here between the 'internal breezes, sobbings of the place' and the living energy of the horse riders:

Oh! ye Rocks and Streams,
And that still Spirit of the evening air!
Even in this joyous time I sometimes felt
Your presence, when with slackened step we breathed
Along the sides of the steep hills, or when,
Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea,
We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.

Climbing Snowdon (Book XIII, ls 1-119)
This is the imaginative vision with which the poem concludes. Here Wordsworth moves from describing the sights and sounds of the scene to imagining what might lie behind it.

... and from the shore
At distance not the third part of a mile
Was a blue chasm; a fracture in the vapour,
A deep and gloomy breathing-place, through which
Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
Innumerable, roaring with one voice.The universal spectacle throughout
Was shaped for admiration and delight,
Grand in itself alone, but in that breach
Through which the homeless voice of waters rose,
That dark deep thoroughfare, had Nature lodged
The Soul, the Imagination of the whole.

Read in full, The Prelude, Book First

Read episodes from The Prelude:
Boat-stealing
Ice-skating
The Raven's Nest
There was a Boy
Trapping Woodcocks

Click here to turn the pages of the early Prelude from the Electronic Texts - From Goslar to Grasmere website - an interactive version of the original manuscript - (opens in a new window).