The repetition of “Yet I could shape / The image of a Place …”, the phrases tellingly redistributed across the line break and the claim emphasised by that ironic understatement, “Methinks” (“… yet I / Methinks could shape the image of a Place”) insists on the superiority of the imaginative shaping.

The contrast between his earlier sense of beatified location – where he would walk “magisterially with Nature” – and the university environment is sharp with loss of autonomy. The narrator’s disappointment is strongly articulated. I picked out this passage because I think Wordsworth’s self-interrogation is interestingly detailed and uncomfortable, and voices something that many students – including today’s – have perceived on entering a setting they’ve been encouraged to idealise and, possibly, overvalue (fees now of course adding their pernicious effect). The complaint is a lengthy and complex one. Now he’s looking back over a substantial period of time to unravel his original reactions. He had gone up in 1787, the same year he published his first poem. This excerpt from the first (1805) version of Wordsworth’s much-revised autobiographical epic, The Prelude, follows the narrator’s admission that, as a new Cambridge man, he was “ill-tutored for captivity”. Of which ’tis plain to sight they never taste. The witless Shepherd who would drive his Flock Let them parade among the Schools at will,īut spare the House of God. Shall raise them highest in their own esteem Let Folly and False-seeming, we might say, That does but mock this recreant age, at least Her trappings here, should strip them off, abash’d, The passing Day should learn to put aside Youth should be aw’d, possessed as with a senseįor its own sake, in glory, and in praise, Which the enthusiast would perform with love Our unripe years, not wasted, should be made Should spread from heart to heart and stately groves, Which with its aspect should have bent me downĪnd written lore, acknowledg’d my liege Lord, Methinks could shape the image of a Place The image of a Place, which, sooth’d and lull’dĪmong sweet garlands and delightful sounds, More fervent, making me less prompt, perhaps, Not that I slighted Books that were to lackĪll sense, but other passions had been mine,

The prelude wordsworth