- 557 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Prelude, The Recluse & The Excursion
About This Book
Read & Co. presents Wordworth's collected works; "The Prelude", "The Recluse" and "The Excursion" together in one volume with additional biographical excerpts by Anna Maria Hall, Leigh Hunt and Thomas Carlyle. A fantastic collection of Wordsworth's best poetry not to be missed by fans and collectors of his wonderful work."The Prelude", a poem written in blank verse, is Wordsworth's autobiographical magnum opus within which he offers the reader a plethora of personal details about his life. He began writing when he was just 28 and continued to work on it throughout his life. Changed and expanded many times, it was originally conceived as an introduction to "The Recluse", an unfinished work. "The Excursion" is the second and only completed part of Wordsworth's "The Recluse". It revolves around three central figures: the Solitary, who has lived through the horrors and hopes of the French Revolution; the Pastor, to whom a third of the poem is dedicated; and the Wanderer. "The Recluse" was to be Wordsworth 's three-part masterpiece, but tragically remains uncompleted.William Wordsworth (1770ā1850) was an English Romantic poet famous for helping to usher in the Romantic Age in English literature with the publication of "Lyrical Ballads" (1798), which he co-wrote with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was also notably poet laureate of Britain between 1843 until his death in 1850. Other notable works by this author include: "The Tables Turned", "The Thorn", and "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey".
Frequently asked questions
Information
THE EXCURSION
In youth I roamed, on youthful pleasures bent;
And mused in rocky cell or sylvan tent,
Beside swift-flowing Lowther's current clear.
āNow by thy care befriended, I appear
Before thee, Lonsdale, and this Work present,
A token (may it prove a monument!)
Of high respect and gratitude sincere.
Gladly would I have waited till my task
Had reached its close; but Life is insecure,
And Hope full oft fallacious as a dream:
Therefore, for what is here produced I ask
Thy favour; trusting that thou wilt not deem
The Offering, though imperfect, premature.
Rydal Mount, Westmorland,
July 29, 1814.
PREFACE.
Musing in Solitude, I oft perceive
Fair trains of imagery before me rise,
Accompanied by feelings of delight
Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed;
And I am conscious of affecting thoughts
And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes
Or elevates the Mind, intent to weigh
The good and evil of our mortal state.
āTo these emotions, whencesoe'er they come,
Whether from breath of outward circumstance,
Or from the Soulāan impulse to herself,
I would give utterance in numerous Verse.
āOf Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hopeā
And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith;
Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of moral strength, and intellectual power;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;
Of the individual Mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there
To Conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence which governs all;
I sing:ā"fit audience let me find though few!"
Holiest of Men.āUrania, I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven!
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deepāand, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
All strengthāall terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form;
Jehovahāwith his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones,
I pass them, unalarmed. Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man,
My haunt, and the main region of my Song,
āBeautyāa living Presence of the earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms
Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed
From earth's materialsāwaits upon my steps;
Pitches her tents before me as I move,
An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fieldsālike those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main, why should they be
A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
āI, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation:āand, by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:āand how exquisitely, too,
Theme this but little heard of among Men,
The external World is fitted to the Mind;
And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish:āthis is our high argument.
āSuch grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft
Must turn elsewhereāto travel near the tribes
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights
Of madding passions mutually inflamed;
Must hear Humanity in fields and groves
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang
Brooding above the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of Cities; may these sounds
Have their authentic comment,āthat, even these
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!
āCome thou prophetic Spirit! that inspir'st
The human Soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come; and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts
Of mighty Poets; upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight; that my Song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence,āand secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect
Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere!āAnd if with this
I mix more lowly matter; with the thing
Contemplated, describe the Mind and Man
Contemplating; and who, and what he was,
The transitory Being that beheld
This Vision,āwhen and where, and how he lived;ā
Be not this labour useless. If such theme
May sort with highest objects, then, dread Power,
Whose grac...
Table of contents
- William Wordsworth
- THE PRELUDE
- THE RECLUSE
- THE EXCURSION