Prelude
(Nico)

Instrumental

The Prelude (Book III)
Residence at Cambridge
(William Wordsworth)

[...]
The Evangelist St. John my patron was:
Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first
Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure;
Right underneath, the College kitchens made
A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,
But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes
Of sharp command and scolding intermixed.
Near me hung Trinity's loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
[...]

The Prelude
is the name of Wordsworth's great autobiographical
poem. The earliest manuscripts, date from 1798.
The first complete version dates from 1805
but was not published until after Wordsworth's
death in 1850 and was given its name by his wife Mary.