Wordsworth: growing up in nature
William Wordsworth, The Prelude
Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
Foster'd alike by beauty and by fear;
Much favour'd in my birthplace, and no less
In that beloved Vale to which, erelong,
I was transplanted. Well I call to mind
('Twas at an early age, ere I had seen
Nine summers) when upon the mountain slope
The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapp'd
The last autumnal crocus, 'twas my joy
To wander half the night among the Cliffs
And the smooth Hollows, where the woodcocks ran
Along the open turf. In thought and wish
That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,
I was a fell destroyer. On the heights
Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied
My anxious visitation, hurrying on,
Still hurrying, hurrying onward; moon and stars
Were shining o'er my head; I was alone,
And seem'd to be a trouble to the peace
That was among them. Sometimes it befel
In these night-wanderings, that a strong desire
O'erpower'd my better reason, and the bird
Which was the captive of another's toils
Became my prey; and, when the deed was done
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.
Nor less in springtime when on southern banks
The shining sun had from his knot of leaves
Decoy'd the primrose flower, and when the Vales
And woods were warm, was I a plunderer then
In the high places, on the lonesome peaks
Where'er, among the mountains and the winds,
The Mother Bird had built her lodge. Though mean
My object, and inglorious, yet the end
Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill sustain'd, and almost, as it seem'd,
Suspended by the blast which blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag; Oh! at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ears! the sky seem'd not a sky
Of earth, and with what motion mov'd the clouds!
The mind of Man is fram'd even like the breath
And harmony of music. There is a dark
Invisible workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, and makes them move
In one society.
What we love about this passage...
The poet looks back in disbelief at how bold and adventurous he was as a child growing up in the Lake District in England. The strength of feeling in these memories of childhood redefines nostalgia--not a longing for some peaceful, serene landscape but for soaring moments of unfettered, youthful exploration and a kind of solitude that can only be found in nature. Wordsworth captures how important it is for children to feel such moments of exhilaration as well as the fear of danger in encounters with nature, to feel its beauty, thrill to its power, and be awed by its scale. Although he admits that his aim in clambering out onto the rocky crag was not noble--he was trying to steal the eggs from a raven's nest--he feels it gave him unparalleled exposure to the force and music of the wind blowing around him, a feeling that has stayed with him for life.
About the author
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was one of the leading poets of the Romantic movement in literature. His epic poem The Prelude charts his development from growing up in the Lake District through his education at Cambridge through to maturity.
To read alongside...
Anne of Green Gables (1908) by the Canadian writer L.M. Montgomery depicts a child similarly nurtured by her natural surroundings, in this case the extraordinary landscape of Prince Edward Island where Anne grows up. The novel--beloved of millions of readers, in over 35 languages--shows how formative her experiences of nature are for Anne's character and spirit.
George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss (1860) charts the growth of Maggie Tulliver from girlhood to adulthood and shows how, because of her gender, she must constantly suppress and tame her exuberance and her instinctive curiosity about the world. She runs away from home at one point, and even cuts off her beautiful long hair out of sheer frustration at the constraints placed on girls. Eliot and Montgomery both depict girls growing up in rural environments, but the difference that the five decades separating these two novels makes is striking in terms of the relative freedom given to the female characters to roam, explore, and experience nature.
The 2019 film The Personal History of David Copperfield starring Dev Patel makes an interesting companion to the Wordsworth excerpt in its exploration of childhood seen through an adult lens--as does the Charles Dickens novel on which it was based, David Copperfield.
A final suggestion, this one from Alexandra Paddock, co-director of LitHits: Wordsworth's passage is also saying something about being a writer and about how these childhood experiences in nature directly shaped the poet that he has become. Along these lines, The Cost of Living, which is the second novel of Deborah Levy’s autobiographical trilogy, comes to mind. When she is an adult, her child self reappears in her dreams and joins her family in their current lives (which are about to change). Levy deliberately twists the convention of beginning autobiography with childhood, and challenges narratives of memory and memorialising throughout the whole work--which itself was first inspired by George Orwell’s essay “Why I write” (1946). Orwell too starts by looking back at his earliest years: “From a very early ages, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.”
Curator's Corner
Many thanks to one of our faithful readers, Gordon M Shepherd, for suggesting the Wordsworth passage for today. 'I encountered this passage in a course I took on British literature at Iowa State University in the 1950s, and I was struck by how well it conveyed a central truth of existence: the essence of being human is that it takes a long time to develop in your youth, and that gives time for you to absorb experience so that it has meaning, informing your ability to cope with life; for properties to emerge in your behavior that reflect deeper qualities of meaning that involve experiences of both beauty and fear.'
Suggest a LitHit!
Tell us your own favourites from literature you've read, and become a Guest Curator. Just email us with the following information:
Your full name
The title of the book you're suggesting
The location of the excerpt within the book (e.g., "in the middle of chapter 5"), or the excerpt itself copied into the email or attached to it (in Word)
Why you love it, in just a few sentences
**Please note that we welcome all suggestions but at the moment we can only release excerpts that are out of copyright and in the public domain. This means 75 years or more since the author's death. You can find many such out-of-copyright texts on the internet, for example at Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks.
About LitHits
You might also enjoy...
Writers Make Worlds: https://writersmakeworlds.com/
The Ten Minute Book Club: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/ten-minute-book-club
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/
Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/
The Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
“Five Tips to Get Reading Again if You’ve Struggled During the Pandemic,” The Conversation (8 January 2021): https://theconversation.com/five-tips-to-get-reading-again-if-youve-struggled-during-the-pandemic-152904
Feedback
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our newsletter:
kirsten@lit-hits.co.uk
Graphic design by Sara Azmy
All curation content © 2022 LitHits. All rights reserved.