William Wordsworth - 1 - Ian McKellen reads from The Prelude torrent

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown...


John Stuart Mill famously was made human again by reading Wordsworth. The imposition by his Benthamite father of an especially mechanical education had produced a desiccated calculating machine. (Ancient Greek at the age of three, then a regimen of Political Economy, Philosophy and Mathematics) A nervous collapse from mental aridity was the consequence, and Wordsworth's poetry 'thought coloured by feeling under the excitement of beauty', the restorative.

This is the CD 'A popular selection from The Prelude read by Ian McKellen', recorded by the BBC at Dove Cottage in 2005 and 2006, and released by The Wordsworth Trust in 2007. I have combined this with additional segments from the BBC's broadcast of The Prelude in 2011. McKellen relates in his blog how he recorded the complete Prelude at Grasmere. Presumably we shall have to wait until someone is minded to extract it from the BBC's vaults. In the meantime go to -

http://sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/collection/1170406 for readings.of the complete 1805 Prelude by members of the Faculty of English at Cambridge. (a strictly amateur production compared to McKellen, but there is substance in the speech of those who have paid attention to the significance of the words. I am happy to report a minimum of academic droning)

Also go to - http://www.naxosspokenwordlibrary.com/ for a just released reading of the 1850 version of the complete Prelude