The work is a poetic reflection on Wordsworth's own sense of his poetic vocation as it developed over the course of his life. Its focus and mood present a sharp and fundamental fall away from the neoclassical and into the Romantic. Milton, who is mentioned by name in line 181 of Book One, rewrote God's creation and The Fall of Man in Paradise Lost in order to "justify the ways of God to men," Wordsworth chooses his own mind and imagination as a subject worthy of epic.
This spiritual autobiography evolves out of Wordsworth's "persistent metaphor [that life is] a circular journey whose end is 'to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time' (T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, lines 241-42). The Prelude opens with a literal journey [during his manhood] whose chosen goal [...] is the Vale of Grasmere. The Prelude narrates a number of later journeys, most notably the crossing of the Alps in Book VI and, in the beginning of the final book, the climactic ascent of Snowdon. In the course of the poem, such literal journeys become the metaphorical vehicle for a spiritual journey—the quest within the poet's memory [...]".[2]
