﻿woedsworth's mind 



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typical of Wordsworthian doctrine, and 'The Prelude' is full of 

 teaching, but not of teaching for teaching's sake. 



'The Prelude' describes the way in which the poet finds in 

 certain aspects of nature the symbols for his emotional expression. 

 It shows how he learns gradually what these symbols may signify 

 in recollection and meditation, and how it is the poet's duty to be 

 faithful to these meanings which have been widening his conscious- 

 ness and thereby indicating his function in the world. It is the 

 poet's attempt to recreate the mood, the atmosphere, in which he 

 lives, and in which he must be studied. From this point of view it 

 is both creative and critical. It defines once more for us the round 

 of thought through which the romantic mind moves, the round of 

 wonder, of search, of realization that only becomes wonder anew 

 and further search. And if it defines this chiefly for the poet, one 

 can still see how, in other terms and by means of other symbols, it 

 could be done for the scientist and for the philosopher, who are 

 also wonderers, searchers, and romanticists. It is a poem with many 

 widening significances, and just because it is thus lifelike, like the 

 enlarging consciousness of egotistical and individual man, it is both 

 a creation of life and a great criticism of life — which are essentials, 

 not of poetry alone, but of all great art. 



The leading ideas in 'The Prelude,' the aspirations and duties 

 which unite to govern Wordsworth's mental growth, may be pre- 

 sented in terms of that round of romantic experience which we have 

 previously noticed. Wordsworth describes himself as a child dif- 

 ferent from all others, extra-sensitve to the voices of the air and the 

 sights of the hills, dwelling apart in a land of exhiliratecl fancy, 

 full of inexpressible imaginings, always at play in his own mind 

 which he perceives to be a fine and rare place, a secret retreat. 

 Many children have this experence, but it usually discontinues be- 

 fore ministering greatly to the egotism and self-consciousness of 

 adolescence. Wordsworth had very early a sense of thought en- 

 larging in many unusual directions ; but the step which separates 

 him from his companions is his recognition, when still not much 

 more than a boy, that his rarer mind is the result of natural in- 

 fluences, and that he owes, as a foster-child, from now on, an intense 

 1 spiritual loyalty to nature. To explain what this means, what spirit 

 and nature mean in this sense, is the poet's initial motive. For a 

 time, his college education seemingly interrupts his communion 

 with his native hills. But on his return from Cambridge, his next 

 discovery is that he has new powers of comprehension. His fancy 



