![]() ![]() Wordsworth's own monument to posterity is also a poem – "The Prelude" – and, like many of his speakers, he would not have chosen to be remembered this way. The stories they tell end in defeat, but the poems endure. " The Ruined Cottage", "The Female Vagrant" and " The Thorn" attempt to take the measure of the worst losses that can befall an individual. The question of what remains after our dearest hopes have been disappointed is addressed by the greatest of Wordsworth's early poems. Of course, Michael's true monument is the magnificent poem that tells his tale. The stones, the poem tells us, are the only evidence of his existence. Michael sank into despair, and when he died his land was sold to pay his creditors. Michael's son went to London to seek his fortune, but "gave himself / To evil courses" in the "dissolute city" before fleeing abroad. " The poem goes on to describe a hidden valley on the banks of Green-head Gill where, if we follow the poem's directions, we may just glimpse the following sight: "Beside the brook / there is a straggling heap of unhewn stones!" These stones are the remains of the sheep-fold that Michael, the shepherd who owned the land, intended to build. It is aesthetically pleasing, intellectually rigorous, and completely satisfying." Michael", the final poem in Lyrical Ballads, begins quietly with a line that is nearly a promise and not quite an invitation: "If from the public way you turn your steps. At last-with Engell's eloquent and succinct introduction, helpful marginal glosses, notes, a chronology, and maps-American readers and students have a Prelude of their own."-Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books "Set in a handsome, hardbound edition that equally fits in a coffee table display or upon a scholar's desk, this new edition is appropriate for the amateur and expert alike.There are no faults to be had with this book. These offer to the American reader's eye an array of scenes indispensable to an understanding of Wordsworth's world-lakes, crags, nocturnes, ships at sea, the Alps, Stonehenge, Revolutionary France, Cambridge, London. Handsomely produced by Godine in a broad horizontal format (twelve by nine and a half inches), the volume is illustrated on almost every other page by paintings or drawings contemporaneous with the poem itself. Raymond (who sought out the invaluable illustrations). Praise for the Godine edition of The Prelude "A marvelous book - the great poem magnificently illustrated with 130 full-color paintings, drawing, maps and other visual aids contemporaneous with its writing."-Lloyd Schwartz, WBUR & NPR's The ARTery "The Prelude is the greatest and most original of English autobiographies."-Sir Frank Kermode "With startled joy I encountered the glorious new edition of The Prelude by my Harvard colleague James Engell, working in collaboration with the independent scholar Michael D. Scrupulously selected and edited from the definitive manuscripts in existence, the marginal notes and glosses provide an extra touch that makes this a truly enlightening reading experience. ![]() A meditation on the self, this work still stands as a masterpiece of English literature, and is here complemented and enhanced by 200 contemporary color plates that both illuminate and elucidate the text. Inspired by his dear friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poem charts the development of the author's mind, from childhood to Cambridge, London, the Alps, and France, touching on subjects ranging from leisure to literature, nature to imagination, and everything in between. In this fully illustrated and annotated edition, it finally receives the treatment it deserves. The Prelude, William Wordsworth's masterful autobiographical work, composed in blank verse, is generally considered the poem at the heart of the Romantic movement and one of the great poems in the English language. ![]()
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