However, this pleasant, dream-like quality changes with the sight of the ‘huge peak’ – as if the experience turns into a nightmare which is almost gothic in tone. Wordsworth uses a simile to describe the grace of his boat: it is ‘like a swan’, and this image is one of peace and natural beauty. There is a lot of sibilance here, too, adding to the feeling that it is a hushed experience. The ‘small circles glittering idly in the moon’, the ‘sparkling light’ and the ‘elfin pinnace’ in the first section of the poem have an ethereal tone.

There is a dreamlike quality to the language used in The Prelude, helping to convey the sense of a memory, viewed hazily across the years. Wordsworth was a key player in the Romantic movement, along with Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Byron, and Shelley.They opposed industrialisation and science.The Romantics explored nature, humanity, and emotion.The Romantics rallied against the formal requirements of poetry at the time.The movement began in the 1700s & early 1800s.Other Romantic poets include Blake, Keats, Byron and Shelley. Wordsworth, along with his good friend Coleridge, were considered key players of the Romantic movement. They were also concerned about the rights of the poor, feeling that they were often exploited by the Establishment. Romantics were interested in the power of nature, humanity and emotion they were opposed to the industrialisation and scientific progress which were sweeping through Europe at the time. The Romantic literary movement, which occurred in the late 1700s and early 1800s, saw poets rebel against the strict, more formal requirements of poetry which had preceded them. Wordsworth became England’s Poet Laureate in 1843.As a poet, Wordsworth worked closely with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Wordsworth fell in love with Annette Vallon but left her after she became pregnant.While on his tour, Wordsworth was exposed to the plight of the “common man” as the French Revolution began to stir.In 1791, Wordsworth left university and embarked on a walking tour of Europe.He became England’s Poet Laureate in 1843 and died in 1850. William eventually married an old school friend, Mary Hutchinson, and they had five children together.Īs a poet he worked closely with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing a collection called ‘Lyrical Ballads’. William was extremely close to his sister, Dorothy, and the two lived together in a cottage in Devon. William left her and returned to England before the baby was born. Whilst there, William fell in love with a French woman called Annette Vallon and she became pregnant. Wordsworth was inspired by its cause of the common man rising up against the monarchy. In France, the Revolution was beginning to stir. In 1791, he left Cambridge and went on a walking tour of Europe. As a young man, he went to Cambridge University. William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District in 1770.

The prelude poem by william wordsworth