The Prelude Quotes

“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“I had melancholy thoughts...
a strangeness in my mind,
A feeling that I was not for that hour,
Nor for that place.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of solitude.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Duty were our games.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Go to the poets, they will speak to thee
More perfectly of purer creatures--”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Feeling comes in aid
Of feeling, and diversity of strength
Attends us, if but once we have been strong.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Here must thou be, O man,
Strength to thyself — no helper hast thou here —
Here keepest thou thy individual state:
No other can divide with thee this work,
No secondary hand can intervene
To fashion this ability. 'Tis thine,
The prime and vital principle is thine
In the recesses of thy nature, far
From any reach of outward fellowship,
Else 'tis not thine at all.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Thence did I drink the visionary power;
And deem not profitless those fleeting moods
Of shadowy exultation: not for this,
That they are kindred to our purer mind
And intellectual life; but that the soul,
Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
Remembering not, retains an obscure sense
Of possible sublimity, whereto
With faculties still growing, feeling still
That whatsoever point they gain, they yet
Have something to pursue.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Oh, blank confusion! true epitome
Of what the mighty City is herself,
To thousands upon thousands of her sons,
Living amid the same perpetual whirl
Of trivial objects, melted and reduced
To one identity, by differences
That have no law, no meaning, and no end—
Oppression, under which even highest minds
Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Mighty is the charm
Of these abstractions to a mind beset
With images, and haunted by herself
And specially delightful unto me
Was that clear synthesis built up aloft
So gracefully.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“How oft, amid those overflowing streets,
Have I gone forward with the crowd, and said
Unto myself, "The face of every one
That passes by me is a mystery!”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“All moveables of wonder, from all parts,
Are here—Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig,
The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,
Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl,
The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,
The Wax-work, Clock-work, all the marvellous craft
Of modern Merlins, Wild Beasts, Puppet-shows,
All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,
All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts
Of man, his dullness, madness, and their feats
All jumbled up together, to compose
A Parliament of Monsters.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Nor was it mean delight
To watch crude Nature work in untaught minds;
To note the laws and progress of belief;
Though obstinate on this way, yet on that
How willingly we travel, and how far!
To have, for instance, brought upon the scene
The champion, Jack the Giant-killer: Lo!
He dons his coat of darkness; on the stage
Walks, and achieves his wonders, from the eye
Of living Mortal covert, "as the moon
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."
Delusion bold! and how can it be wrought?
The garb he wears is black as death, the word
"Invisible" flames forth upon his chest.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“But that night
When on my bed I lay, I was most mov'd
And felt most deeply in what world I was;
With unextinguish'd taper I kept watch,
Reading at intervals”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude - An Autobiographical Poem