‘Extract from, The Prelude’ by William Wordsworth tells a true story from Wordsworth’s
own childhood. It takes place in the Lake District, an area of North West England famous
for its lakes, forests and mountains. The poem describes the poet as a young boy stealing
a rowing boat and rowing across Ullswater Lake.
Wordsworth, led by nature, which is personified in the poem as ‘her’, finds a boat chained
up, undoes the chain, gets in and pushes off onto the lake. Proud of his skill, he rows
the boat, feeling powerful and delighted with himself. But all this is about to change.
As he rows, Wordsworth fixes his eyes on a huge mountain that springs into view. Terrified,
he turns and rows back to the shore, harassed for days by the memory of the event.
Let me just point out, this video is a quick recap of the poem – to learn more, watch
my full analysis which I’ll link at the end.
William Wordsworth was one of the romantic poets (as were William Blake who wrote ‘London’
and Percy Shelley who wrote ‘Ozymandias’). Romantic poetry was a poetic movement of the
late 18th and early 19th centuries. There are many conventions to romantic poetry, but
the one which is key for this poem is a dislike of urban life and embrace of the natural world.
So let’s begin by looking at how the speaker thinks he is powerful in the opening lines
of the poem:
One summer evening (led by her) I found A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home. Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping
in Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side, Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track Of sparkling light. But now, like one who
rows, Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat Went heaving through the water like a swan;
Firstly, Wordsworth describes taking the boat as an 'act of stealth'. The word 'stealth'
has a connotation of being both sneaky and sly; there is no doubt that the action is
morally wrong, but the speaker seems to feel no sense of this: he is selfish, taking whatever
he wants with no thought of the consequences.
The poet’s use of positive imagery presents his sense of power whilst rowing: 'circles
glittering' and 'sparkling light' give a magical, almost celestial quality to the moment.
We can see that the poet’s ego and sense of power is growing, from the way his description
of the boat changes. What began on line 2 as ‘a little boat’ is described on line
17 as an ‘elfin pinnace’. A ‘pinnace’ is a light sailing ship, and the adjective
‘elfin’ imbues a sense of magic to the scene – the poet is feeling all powerful,
as if he is the hero of some mythical story. The simile ‘heaving through the water like
a swan’ adds to this sense of power – the opening of the poem then, is rich in imagery
and figurative language, all suggesting the speaker’s sense of power.
But then things change. The speaker describes how .
‘a huge peak, black and huge, As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head.’
The shift in language usage is extremely important here:
The poet's previous use of figurative and expressive language has deserted him here.
Only a few lines before, the ‘elfin pinnace’ moved 'like a swan', now the speaker is in
such a state of shock that he regresses to a simplistic definition of what he sees before
him: a huge peak, black and huge. The repetition of 'huge' is notable. If a student wrote this
line in a piece of creative writing, their teacher might well suggest they replace one
use of ‘huge’ with a different word. The repetition means it’s clunky and doesn’t
read or flow well like the previous parts of the poem did. And this is deliberate repetition
for effect on the part of Wordsworth; the speaker’s confidence, pride and vocabulary
have left him. The structural shift in language usage highlights the impact the mountain has
had on the speaker: it has drained him of all sense of power. He’s realized in an
instant that humans are not powerful: nature is truly powerful.
The poem is structured as one long stanza. There are numerous possible reasons for this,
and I look at a number of them in my longer video on the poem, but here let’s just look
at one idea: when we read the whole poem aloud with no major breaks or pauses, we are overwhelmed
by the immensity of the poem. This overwhelming aspect reflects how young Wordsworth himself
was overwhelmed by his experience with nature. This is reinforced by another structural feature:
enjambment.
Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence beyond the end of a line. The first sentence
of the poem flows over the first three lines. Enjambment can be used to suggest an overpowering
urge to communicate - an inability to stop and order your thoughts into a coherent and
ordered structure. Much like the fact that the poem consists of one long stanza with
no breaks, the enjambment adds to the sense of the overwhelming effect nature has upon
the speaker.
The repetition of 'no' in 'No familiar shapes / Remained, no pleasant images of trees, / Of
sea or sky, no colours of green fields' shows how the speaker’s pride from the opening
lines has vanished. Not only is he now not confident of what he knows, he can only explain
things in terms of what he does NOT know, hence the repetition of the word 'no'.
So in terms of power and conflict, the poem shows us a speaker with misguided notions
of human power. He learns the lesson that nature is truly powerful.
With that in mind, which poems compare well with ‘Extract from the Prelude’? Well,
in terms of misguided notions of human power: ‘Ozymandias’, ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Kamikaze’
and ‘Tissue’ are perhaps the most obvious picks. In terms of the power of nature, you
might look at ‘Kamikaze’, ‘Storm on the Island’, ‘Exposure’ and ‘Tissue’.
But which other poems would you compare it with, and why? Put your comments in the comments
section.
For more on this poem, pick up a copy of Mr Bruff’s Guide to Power and Conflict poetry,
available exclusively in eBook form and linked in the description. If you like this shorter
style of analysis video do give it a thumbs up and I will make some more, but remember:
this video isn’t intended to tell you everything you need to know about the poem – it’s
a recap. For the full lesson, check out the video linked here on-screen.