Extract from: The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Pantheism

• The idea that God is to be found in all things in nature

• This belief is one that celebrates and reveres nature

“One summer evening (led by her) I found/ A little boat tied to a willow tree”

• “her” refers to nature

• Wordsworth personifies nature to make it seem as if it is nature which has led him to the boat

• He doesn’t blame himself for stealing the boat as he sees it as a natural act which links to the theme of pantheism

• Willow branches hang down, they are often called weeping willows and this symbolises sadness but the limbs suggest that it has a body

  • This is contrasted with the summer setting

“The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above/ Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.”

• A horizon looks like a straight line and looks like a boundary but this boundary could also be an illusion as you can reach it and your horizon changes since the Earth is a sphere

  • Symbolically this means that the boundaries we place on our lives are illusions are conventions created by society

  • This fits with the ideas of a Romantic poet- they throw away the idea of enlightenment (the idea that humans could do anything with science) which was cold, hard and logical but there is more to life than that kind of view and we should live a different kind of life based on our experiences

• When looking to the sky, you would normally find God but because this is a pantheistic poem, there is “nothing but” the sky

  • Wordsworth is presenting the idea that God is not up in the sky or in Heaven and that Christianity is another kind of boundary, limiting what we can and can’t do- he suggests we should set our own morals based on our own experiences

• Stars are another boundary as they symbolise fate- Wordsworth is questioning whether we should let fate and destiny hinder us or if our destiny and morality are in our own hands rather society- this is why he steals the boat

“And growing still in stature the grim shape/ Towered up between me and the stars”

• The crag/mountain is blocking the poet’s view between him and the stars showing the power of nature above humans and their ambition

  • The enlightenment was the idea in this time that humans could do anything with science but Wordsworth rejects this idea

  • He implies that the experiences and advances of humans mean nothing when compared to the vastness of nature and the cosmos

• The mountain is accusing the poet of a moral sin for trying to aspire to have his own ambition and live unrestricted

“my brain/worked with a dim and undetermined sense/ Of unknown modes being”

• Pantheism is suggesting that God spoke to Wordsworth through nature as accuses him of acting him in a way he shouldn’t

  • This contradicts the nature, “her”, at the start of the poem

  • This leads the poet to question who decides if someone is moral or immoral

• Wordsworth is gaining a “dim” understanding that he can be who he wants to be despite what society and religion imposes on him

“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.”

• Seeing the power of nature has traumatised Wordsworth and now he uses the plural of “huge and might forms” to suggest the world is full of nature that humans cannot possible overcome

• “do not live like living men” implies that nature is full of gods which are above humanity’s understanding

• Guilt could be the reason as to why the poet’s dreams are troubled

  • Implying Christianity does not teach right and wrong, but nature does instead because it is omnipotent- this links to the theme of pantheism

• Guilt troubles his dreams because he is imagining things that go against society’s moral teachings

Form and structure of the poem

• Autobiographical

• Written in one stanza- poem is about freedom and that is expressed in an unrestricted free verse

• Written in iambic and trochaic pentameter, 10 syllables per line

  • Poets do this when trying to recreate natural speech which is important as this poem is biographical as Wordsworth never published this poem- he is speaking to himself, not anyone else