Like Rousseau’s Confessions, this poet’s whole project illustrates his line, “The child is father of the man,” which becomes Freud’s analysis a century later. Thus pride of strength,/ And the vain-glory of superior skill, were tempered.”**(Book II).īefore finding his epic subject of self-development, the poet searches “some old / Romantic tale by Milton left unsung / More often turning to some gentle place /Within the groves of Chivalry.” Or, “How Mithridates northward passed…” or “some high-souled man,/ Unnamed among the chronicles of kings, / Suffered in silence for Truth’s sake….” At Scottish home fires, and in Wordsworth’s childhood two centuries ago, “we pursued / Our home amusements by the warm peat-fire.” (Book I, end) Also as in Beaton, rural labor teaches ethics that the city may not here, young Wordy* rows, races against his fellows on a lake toward an island with the remains of a chapel “In such a race/ So ended, disappointment could be none,/…We rested in the shade, all pleased alike, / Conquered and conqueror.

Beaton mysteries: unexpectedly linked by fuel. First read over a half-century ago, but chosen now by chance after two M.C.

Wordsworth the prelude book 1