Preludes to Wordsworth ​

Preludes to Wordsworth is cycle of settings
of poems by William Wordsworth. They were
written as contributions to the project 
'Wordsworth 250 - For the Love of Nature'.

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'Wordsworth 250' is the brainchild of his living relatives.

It consists of readings and interpretations of Wordsworth's
poetry in celebration of the 250th Anniversary of his birth

on April 7, 1770.

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I'm delighted to have my work included on the site
alongside readings by the Wordsworth family and

wonderful actors such as Brian Cox,Ruth Wilson,
William H Macy, Tom Conti, Mary McCormack, and Stephen
Fry.

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The songs
(audio at the bottom of the page)

To---, on Her First Ascent to Helvellyn  - Written in 1816, this poem was addressed to'Miss Blacket'. Wordsworth also begins Book VIII of his masterpiece, The Prelude with a view from Helvellyn, which is a mountain in the Lake District close to Ullswater.

London, 1802 - Written in 1802, this poem is a scathing attack on Wordsworth's English contemporaries as stagnant and selfish which eulogises seventeenth-century poet John Milton

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A Complaint - A poem which concerns the changes brought about by loss of someone close. 

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Written In March - This optimistic poem, written at a time of war, compares the oncoming of spring with a time of renewal. 

 

Song for the Spinning Wheel  - Subtitled 'Founded upon a Belief Prevalent among the Pastoral Vales of Westmoreland', this poem speaks of the spinning wheel producing spun wool on its own over night. 
 

Lucy Gray - Written in 1799, this poem was inspired by Wordsworth's own experience of being in the snow and his sister's recollection of the story of a small girl who was lost on the moors near Halifax in Yorkshire.

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'Daffodils' or 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' - Written between 1804 and 1807, this most famous of Wordsworth's poems was inspired by a walk with his sister Dorothy by Lake Ullswater on 15 April 1802.

     

We Are Seven was written in 1798 and published in Lyrical Ballads. It describes a discussion an adult and a "little cottage girl", which turns on the girl's insistence that two of her dead siblings dwell with her.