ABSTRACT
The poem opens with a deep sigh of release. The peaceful liberating influence of the ‘gentle breeze’ (1) is introduced by Wordsworth's own expending breath. The breeze is synonymous with freedom and blows from ‘the green fields and from the clouds/And from the sky’ (2–3). There is an immediate opening out in terms of both height and breadth (‘fields … clouds … sky’), which conveys the exhilaration of having no direction and being totally free. The Poet feels a sympathy with the breeze because it is as homeless and as liberated as himself. It is as though it answers his mood, ‘seems half conscious of the joy it gives’ (4), leading on to his excited recognition, ‘O welcome messenger! O welcome friend!’ (5). Set against this ecstatic mood of peace and gentleness is the harsh and punitive concept of the city as ‘prison’ (8) where he has been a ‘captive’ (6). Words which express restriction, ‘bondage’, ‘walls’ (7), ‘immured’ (8), are placed against notions of absolute freedom. He emerges, like the prisoners in Fidelio, from captivity – ‘Now I am free, enfranchised and at large’ (9). Enfranchised was a word used particularly in connection with freed slaves, and ‘house/Of bondage’ (6–7) reminds us specifically of the Israelites led by Moses out of slavery in Egypt (‘I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, 2out of the house of bondage.’ Exodus 20:2). Potentially enclosing words in the rhetorical questions which follow, ‘dwelling’, ‘vale’ (11), ‘harbour’ (12), are lightly passed over, while the unanswered questions themselves create a sense of numerous possibilities left intact. The commitment involved by making a single choice is excluded.
