Extract from, The Prelude Flashcards
‘One….’
‘One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home.’
‘Straight…’
‘Straight I unloosed her chain’
‘It was an act of …….
And ……….’
‘It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure,’
‘Small…..’
‘Small circles glittering idly in the moon’ - later says they ‘melted all into one track’ - metaphor of cycle of life (beauty) later rejoining nature in death.
‘Went…..’
‘Went heaving through the water like a swan;’
‘She was…’
‘She was an elfin pinnace’
‘The hor….’
‘The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge’
‘And gr…..’
‘And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars’
‘Strode after me’
They feel the mass is chasing them.
‘Back to the….’
‘Back to the covert of the willow tree’
Lexical field of unknown
‘Undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being’
‘No familiar shapes’
‘There hung a darkness’
Mirrors to stars being blocked by the peak. It holds a mental presence - a poignant memory.
Description of nature’s unpleasantness.
‘No pleasant images of trees.
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;’
Last 2 lines?
‘Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were trouble to my dreams.’
