The Reach of Words

The frankly tentative style of The Prelude's greatest moments is matched by the unpretentious structure in which they are so loosely assembled. There Wordsworth stresses that this autobiography is not a simple record of ambitions fulfilled: Not of outward things done visibly for other minds, words, signs, Symbols or actions. Dismissing external, causally linked events, The Prelude confronts private, and apparently disconnected, moments of feeling. Language might seem better suited to some implications of such ambiguous moments than to others. A mood which is evocatively 'of time' may find apt 'words, signs, /Symbols or actions' in which to share intimations of mortality with 'other minds', and to demonstrate visibly an interest in other people. But the often remote 'spots' which in one memory function as the 'symbols' of eternity may sometimes constitute a less sharable vision: It lies far hidden from the reach of words. The Prelude's sense of audience is more affectionately specific than this might suggest.