The Prelude: the boy, the boat and the mountain that followed him home

What could frighten a boy on a calm lake so badly that he was still writing about it as a grown man? One summer night in the Lake District, a schoolboy called William Wordsworth takes a boat that is not his. Nothing attacks him. Nobody chases him. He rows home safe. Yet Wordsworth kept reworking the long poem that tells of that night for the rest of his life, and it was only published after he died. Something did follow him home, and the poem knows exactly what it was.

This poem is an extract from a much longer one, The Prelude, in which Wordsworth tells the story of his own mind. The speaker is Wordsworth, looking back on himself as a boy. "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." The her who leads him is nature, spoken of as if she were a person. So nature is on his side as the poem begins. "It was an act of stealth And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;" Troubled pleasure: which two feelings is the boy having at the same time? Enjoyment and guilt: the pleasure of the adventure, troubled by knowing it is stealing before anything has happened. Stealth means sneaking, the guilty half of that pair, and it is the word the boy chooses for himself. "Leaving behind her still, on either side, Small circles glittering idly in the moon, Until they melted all into one track Of sparkling light." Here, her means the boat. It leaves small rings of moonlight on either side, which melt into one shining trail behind him. Idly means lazily, so nothing in this night is a threat yet. "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." Utmost means furthest. To the boy, that ridge is the edge of everything. Above it, he believes, there is only 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;" A pinnace is a small boat. Lustily means with energy and enjoyment, so this is the boy at his most confident, rowing hard with his eyes fixed on a ridge.

Then he rows on, out into the lake. "When, from behind that craggy steep till then The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge, As if with voluntary power instinct, Upreared its head." "I struck and struck again, And growing still in stature the grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still," "For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned," The mountain does not really move. As he rows away from the shore, a taller peak behind the ridge comes into view, and the further he goes, the more of it rises over the skyline. Where does the poem change direction: the swan-like rowing, the peak, or getting home? When the peak rears up. The word when, at the start of that sentence, swings the poem from pride to fear, and that change of direction is called the turn, or the volta. Now a different question. Why does Wordsworth repeat huge, instead of finding a bigger word? Because his language runs out. The peak is too huge for any bigger word, so he can only repeat the same one.

The last part of the poem starts with the row back to shore. What follows it lasts for days. "And through the silent water stole my way Back to the covert of the willow tree;" Stole here means crept, the same sneaking as the stealth he set out with. A covert is a hiding place, so the boy creeps back to the willow tree like a thief going into hiding. "There in her mooring-place I left my bark, And through the meadows homeward went, in grave And serious mood;" "but after I had seen That spectacle, for many days, my brain Worked with a dim and undetermined sense Of unknown modes of being;" "o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude Or blank desertion." "No familiar shapes Remained, no pleasant images of trees, Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;" "But huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams." Remember who is telling this: a grown man, looking back. The boy's fright is still clear enough, decades later, to be written down in detail. Why doesn't the poem end when the boat is safely back in its cove?

Because the danger was never on the lake. That is what followed him home: the mountain never moved and never touched him, and its power is measured in how long it stayed in his head. So the poem ends in his dreams, not on the water.

Six short lines hold the whole night, and each one has a job in an answer. First, the theft is "an act of stealth And troubled pleasure". The guilt is loaded before the mountain appears. Second, the boy rows "lustily" at the start, and that one adverb carries all his confidence. Third, the peak: the repeated word shows language failing at the moment nature becomes too big to describe. Fourth, he turns back "with trembling oars". The hands and the oars are the same ones he rowed with a minute ago. So what has changed, if the hands and the oars have not? Only his feeling. Confidence has become fear, so the turn is measured in his own body. Fifth, the "huge and mighty forms" that follow him. What comes home with him is not the mountain, but something he cannot name. And sixth, it ends as a trouble to his dreams. Nature's power here is measured in how long it stays, not in what it destroys. You may have met the word Romantic for Wordsworth's ideas about nature. Used as an idea inside your argument, it helps. Used as an opening paragraph of background, it only delays the answer. In the cluster, The Prelude answers the power of nature, and it shows that power working on a mind rather than on a landscape.

A few gaps to fill before the end. The missing word arrives after each one. He takes the boat in an act of stealth and troubled what? Pleasure. The troubled kind, enjoyed and felt guilty about at once. Now the peak: a huge peak, black and what? Huge, again. The same word twice, because nothing bigger would come. Here's the ending: those huge and mighty forms were a trouble to his what? Dreams. The poem finishes in his sleep, not on the water. Try a line we read but never unpacked: "No familiar shapes Remained". What has the peak taken from him? His ordinary pictures of the world: trees, sea, sky and green fields. The mountain's power is in what it emptied out. A boy on a calm lake, a mountain that never moved, and a man who could not stop writing about what followed him home.

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Next in the chapter: Kamikaze: he came home alive, and his family never spoke to him again. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly E L four oh, oh eight.

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