The Prelude by William Wordsworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I knew C. S. Lewis loved this poem, so I wanted to read it.

I enjoyed the first eight or nine books, which focus on Wordsworth's life and early intellectual growth. Specifically, I really enjoyed the passages where he recounts his youth in the Lake Country, his life at Oxford, a trip he took through Europe during the French Revolution, and a long vacation hiking in the Alps. He makes you feel as if you are there, and he has the same sorts of sehnsucht experiences that C. S. Lewis describes in Surprised by Joy. (In fact, the title "Surprised by Joy" comes directly from a Wordsworth poem.)

I read up to the point where the poem becomes almost totally philosophical, in the last three or four books. But in the portion that I read, there are passages that are beautiful and profound.

I am a man too much of my time, with too short an attention span, too little patience, and a mind affected too much by screens, to fully appreciate the poem. So three stars says more about me than it does about Wordsworth, who is one of the Greats.

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