Summary Wordsworth likens his own attempt to recapture the formative past to the meandering of a river. When it is threatened with dissolution by absorption into the sea, it tries to work its way back to its origins. He apologizes for his digressions and compares himself to a traveler who […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 9: Residence in FranceSummary and Analysis Book 8: Retrospect — Love of Nature Leading to Love of Mankind
Summary We have left London and are in the Lake Country again, in Cumberland. There is thematic continuity, however, because a description of a small annual country fair follows that of St. Bartholomew’s Fair at the end of Book 7. Shepherds and farmers have brought their families. In contrast to […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 8: Retrospect — Love of Nature Leading to Love of MankindSummary and Analysis Book 7: Residence in London
Summary Compared with the books preceding and following, there is a curious lack of introspection in this one. Six years have passed, Wordsworth says, since he began his poem, and he bemoans that it has gone very slowly. It was begun (in 1798) with a great gush of enthusiasm which […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 7: Residence in LondonSummary and Analysis Book 6: Cambridge and the Alps
Summary Autumn arrives and summer vacation is at an end. The poet must return to Cambridge. He is not as eager to return to school as he was to leave it. On the other hand, neither is he depressed. He recalls the girls of the Lake District and their nightly […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 6: Cambridge and the AlpsSummary and Analysis Book 5: Books
Summary A lilting passage evokes the mood of solitude. The subject of the poet’s habitual contemplation is humanity. Wordsworth laments that it is not life’s pains that are our worst affliction; the chief cause of despair is our winning a little fame after constant and unending labor. In some of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 5: BooksSummary and Analysis Book 4: Summer Vacation
Summary It is a bright summer day. The poet scurries in anticipation across the moor and climbs a ridge to witness Lake Windermere spread out before him. Because the lake is long and narrow, he likens it to a river. At last he knows exultation. He finds the scene “magnificent, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 4: Summer VacationSummary and Analysis Book 3: Residence at Cambridge
Summary From the introspection and sometimes moody tone of the first two books, we turn to somewhat more forthright events, which are described in a lighter vein. The more fundamental philosophical questions about life have been partially answered. These investigations are to be put aside while the poet explores some […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 3: Residence at CambridgeSummary and Analysis Book 2: School-Time (continued)
Summary Wordsworth continues the account of his simple childhood. Though he is reviewing his period at Hawkshead and his early education, he never speaks of the grammar school he attended there. The only learning that he mentions takes place outside the classroom, at the hands of nature. He remarks somewhat […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 2: School-Time (continued)Summary and Analysis Book 1: Introduction — Childhood and School-Time
Summary It is a magnificent autumn day. The poet has, by his own account, been too long pent-up in London and only now has managed to return to the beloved Lake District where he spent his childhood and adolescence. It is difficult to fix his age as the poem opens […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Book 1: Introduction — Childhood and School-TimeAbout The Prelude
Between 1770 and 1850, the intellectual life of Europe came to be dominated by what historians have referred to since as the romantic mood. The doctrines it represented and the literary and artistic works it produced came to be known as romanticism. The men who partook of this temper came […]
Read more About The Prelude