Notes

1] The Prelude was first published in 1850, shortly after the poet's death. It had been completed in 1805, though revised on three occasions afterwards. It was composed to accompany and form part of a more extensive and ambitious work, The Recluse, which was never finished. The Prelude remained without a title until the poet's widow named it, shortly before publication. Wordsworth had referred to it as "the poem on my life" or "the poem to Coleridge." The earliest passages in the poem go back to the beginning of 1798; the earliest and briefest version of the poem was completed, in two parts, in 1799-1800. This earliest version, in its extent, general subject, and to a considerable degree in its episodes and phrasing, corresponds to the part of The Prelude printed here. The text used is that of the poem as first finished in its longest form in 1805. Selections are reprinted here by the permission of The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

28] corporeal frame: cf. Tintern Abbey, 43.

36-37] When, return'd After long absence. Wordsworth revisited Hawkshead, accompanied by Coleridge, on Nov. 2, 1799, after an absence of ten years. These lines were composed shortly after, in the winter of 1799-1800.

51] beauteous forms: Cf. Tintern Abbey, 22.

57] Windermere: the largest of the English lakes, about three miles to the east of Hawkshead.

108] a Structure famed: Furness Abbey, near the sea-coast of Lancashire, about twenty miles south-west of Hawkshead.

124] the cross-legg'd Knight. The posture indicates that the knight represented had been on a crusade.

144] Wordsworth refers again to this expedition to Furness Abbey and uses this identical line later in the poem, at X, 560-67.

147] an Inn: The White Lion, at Bowness.

217] Science: systematic knowledge or learning.

219] succedaneum: substitute.

228-29] to class the cabinet/Of their sensations: to classify their sensations as if they were objects to be arranged and displayed in a cabinet.

263-64] The gravitation and the filial bond of nature. Wordsworth is suggesting an analogy between Newton's law of universal gravitation and the attractive and unifying force to be experienced in the love both for human beings and for the natural world.

291-303] For now a trouble came into my mind, etc. The reference seems to be to the death of his mother (1778) and his father (1783): "the props of my affections were remov'd," yet the loss of human objects for love strengthened his love for nature.

314] 'best society': cf. Paradise Lost, IX, 249: "For solitude sometimes is best society."

348] before the hours of School. Archbishop Sandys, who founded Hawkshead Grammar School in 1585 and drew up the statutes to govern it, decreed that teaching must begin not later than 7:30 A.M. between September 29 and March 25 and 6:30 during the rest of the year.

350] Our little Lake: Esthwaite.

352] a Friend: elsewhere identified as John Fleming, of Rayrigg. Their friendship is mentioned in one of Wordsworth's juvenile poems, The Vale of Esthwaite.

376-77] That spirit of religious love in which/I walked with Nature. The phrasing, if not the meaning, is biblical. Cf. Ephesians 5: 1-2: "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love...."

378-81] I still retain'd my first creative sensibility, etc.: referring back to II, 275-80.

415-34] This is the climax of the story of his imaginative development in childhood and early youth, down to his seventeenth year (405) to the time when he first tried seriously to write poetry. This passage had been composed as early as Feb. 1798 for another poem, "The Ruined Cottage."

448-58] if in these times of fear,/This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown, etc. Wordsworth is touching on a theme which Coleridge recommended to him in September 1799: ". . . I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes."

466-67] Thou, my Friend! wert rear'd/ln the great City, etc.: cf. Coleridge's Frost at Midnight, 51-52: "For I was reared/In the great city...."

469] The self-same bourne: the same imaginative region; they had become poets with similar ideas of their art.

479-84] This passage, written in the winter of 1799-1800, is not only a formal conclusion of the first and briefest version of the poem that became The Prelude, but is a farewell in a literal sense, for towards the end of 1799 the friends went their separate ways, Coleridge to settle in London, and Wordsworth to return to the north to live in Grasmere.

Other poems by William Wordsworth