Prelude

Question 1

“O s e (l b h)” - opening line

Answer 1

“One summer evening (led by her)”
- speaker instantly met with the sublime power of nature.
- the parenthetical phrase (“led by her”) suggests the speaker’s passivity in the face of nature - personified as a feminine guide.
^ the gendering of nature as a nurturing, maternal force is a common trope in Romantic poetry, reflecting the idea of nature as a source of spiritual nourishment and guidance.
- ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE could be: the passive construction of the phrase implies a surrender of human agency, a willingness to be guided and shaped by the natural world.
^ links to central exploration of poem: relationship between individual and environment - also suggesting both the allure and the potential dangers of surrending oneself to the natural world.

Question 2

“T h a d, c i s / O b d” (near the end)

Answer 2

“there hung a darkness, call it solitude / Or blank desertion”
- evokes a profound sense of isolation and emptiness in the face of the landscape.
- “darkness” symbolic - literal and figurative - suggesting not only the dimming of the light, but also the speaker’s emotional response to the overwhelming power and scale of the natural world.
- the phrase ‘call it solitude / or blank desertion’ suggests a struggle to put a name to this feeling, to find the right words to capture the complex mix or emotions that nature has invoked on the speaker.
- contrast between ‘solitude’ (peaceful isolation), and ‘blank desertion’ (implying a more unsettling emptiness, a sense of being abandoned or forsaken in the face of nature’s vastness)
- enjambment - creates a sense of hesitation/uncertainty.
- these lines capture the way in which the encounter with nature can be both exhilirating and unsettling - forcing the reader to confront the depths of their own insignificsnce compared to power of nature

Question 3

“t p” (line 6)

Answer 3

“troubled pleasure”
-the oxymoronic phrase captures the complex and contradictory emotuond that the speaker experiences in his encounter with the sublime landscape.
^ One one hand, he feels a sense of pleasure, perhaps even joy, in the face of nature’s beauty and grandeur. YET, this pleasure is not pure or unalloyed; it is ‘troubled’, suggesting a sense of unease, anxiety or even fear.
^ mixture of awe and terror in the face of the nature’s vastness and power (over man)
- shows man’s insignificance

Question 4

“a h p, b a h”

Answer 4

“a huge peak, black and huge”
- overwhelming size and power (hyperbole)
- nature’s supremacy becomes apparent
- he is intimidated
- colour symbolism “black” - evil and monstrous

Question 5

“L i d m p i t s l”

Answer 5

“Lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake”

Question 6

Context + Poet’s message/s

Answer 6

• william wordsworth was born in the Lake District
• difficult childhood - troubled relationship with father
• considered suicide bc of how he was treated
  ^ therefore, he spent a lot of his time outside, to escape his problems

This poem is AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
- very personal to him
- romantic poet –> showed that humans were not treating nature with respect
- mankind always think that they are in control/ have authority over Nature, but NATURE always transcends mankind and is not bound by restrictions of life. (Overpowering)

Question 7

Form + structual points

Answer 7

• first-person narrative - personal to the poet (wordsworth) and describes a turning point in his life.
• use of BLANK VERSE makes it sound serious and important, as if trying to convey the message that mankind always subjects to nature and cannot control it

THREE main sections in this extract:
- in the first, the tone is fairly light, carefree and confident.
- after he is met with the ‘huge black peak’, a volta occurs (“ When,” )in which the tone changes and becomes darker and more fearful
- the final parts, the narrator reflects on how the experience has changed him.