The Prelude Extract: Nature Fights Back

The Prelude

William Wordsworth remembers one night from his boyhood. The extract is a short episode from one very long poem. • It is a summer evening, and he is alone by a lake in the mountains. • He takes a small boat that does not belong to him and rows out onto the water. • Something he sees out there changes the mood completely, and it stays with him long afterwards. The question at the heart of it: who really has power here, the boy or the natural world around him?

The night on the lake

Put the events of the extract in the order they happen.

• He unties a little boat from a willow tree and pushes off from the shore
• He rows confidently towards the top of a ridge, the boat gliding like a swan
• A huge black peak rises up from behind the ridge and seems to follow him
• With trembling oars he turns back and returns the boat to its mooring
• For many days afterwards, huge dark forms move through his mind and his dreams

Wordsworth at work

Five terms carry most of what there is to say about how this extract is written:

Proud of himself

These lines come before anything goes wrong. Tap the TWO phrases that show how confident and pleased with himself the boy is.

• But now, like one who rows,
• /
• Proud of his skill,
• to reach a chosen point
• /
• I fixed my view / Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
• /
• far above / Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

Something follows him

Now the peak appears. Tap the phrase where the mountain seems to come after the boy like a living pursuer.

• a huge peak, black and huge,
• /
• I struck and struck again,
• /
• the grim shape / Towered up between me and the stars,
• /
• And measured motion like a living thing,
• /

Confidence gone

Which TWO phrases show that the boy has lost his confidence once the peak appears?

• "With trembling oars I turned"
• "through the silent water stole my way"
• "Went heaving through the water like a swan"
• "She was an elfin pinnace"
• "With an unswerving line"

Who was Wordsworth?

William Wordsworth grew up in the Lake District and became one of the leading Romantic poets. The Romantics believed the natural world could shape and teach people, and that strong feeling mattered more than polished reason. The Prelude is a long autobiographical poem about the growth of his own mind. He began it in 1798 and went on revising it for decades; it was published in 1850, a few months after his death.

Build a context sentence

Choose the words that turn the context into a point about the poem.

Partners from the cluster

Settle on partners for The Prelude before the exam. Two public-domain poems that pair well with it are below. Storm on the Island is a strong partner too.

Prelude and Exposure

Which TWO statements are genuine comparison points between The Prelude extract and Exposure?

• Both show nature as more powerful than people, but in Wordsworth nature teaches the boy, while in Owen it kills the soldiers
• Both personify nature, so the peak strides after the boy and the east winds knive the soldiers
• Both are written in unrhymed blank verse with no stanzas
• Both are poems about soldiers at war
• Both are set on a lake at night

Why does it follow him?

Early on, Wordsworth calls taking the boat "an act of stealth / And troubled pleasure". How does that help explain why the peak seems to pursue him?

• He already feels guilty about taking the boat, so nature seems to rise up and judge him for it
• The owner of the boat is hiding behind the ridge and chases him back to the shore
• A storm suddenly blows up across the lake and forces him to row for safety
• He is simply exhausted after rowing so far, and his eyes start to play tricks on him

Compare the power of nature

Exam practice. Compare how poets present the power of nature in the extract from The Prelude and in ONE other poem from Power and Conflict. Write at least 150 words.

• A shared point covering both poems
• A short quotation and a named method from each
• The effect of each method
• How the two attitudes differ
• Context only where it explains

What stayed with him

Complete the closing lines, where the experience haunts him for days. o'er my thoughts There hung a _____, call it solitude Or blank _____. ... But huge and _____ forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, a _____ to my dreams.