Extract from, The Prelude

Context

• Romanticism → Wordsworth believed in the sublime, thought the Industrial Revolution + scientific advancements sought to overpower natural world

Structure

• Written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) → reads like a story

• Excerpt from an epic poem → typically entails heroic outcomes, not the case here

Compare with

• Exposure (man’s powerlessness in the face of nature)

• Ozymandias (hubris swept away by nature)

• Storm on the Island (power of nature)

“proud of his skill” ”unswerving line” “fixed my view”

• “Unswerving” and “fixed” suggest utmost certainty, no room for error → hubris

• “proud of his skill” suggests arrogance + overconfidence

“struck and struck again” “trembling oars” “trouble to [his] dreams”

• Repetition of “struck” suggests he is trying to escape quickly → fear → further emphasised by “trembling” → could be interpreted that oars themselves are trembling (personification) → mountain is super scary

• Even when he has physically escaped he is still haunted by it → very very scary 😃

“small circles glittering idly in the moon” “sparkling light”

• “small circles…idly”→ tranquility/serenity

• “glittering” + “sparkling = beauty

• Initial perception of nature

“craggy…huge peak, black and huge”

• “Craggy” suggests mountain is rough + rocky → hostility

• Repetition of “huge” suggests speaker is lost for words as he can’t seem to describe it as anything else → made to feel insignificant in face of nature

• Contrasts with first impression of nature → humanity undermining nature, sublime

“spectacle” “form”

• Abstract + vague ways in which he describes his encounter → inability to label his interaction = inability to yield power of knowledge → nature has the power