the public road

In this stanza, Wordsworth?s leaving the "public road" serves as a metaphor for personal discovery, especially in terms of one?s relationship with nature. It seems, in order to have a truly valuable experience in the natural world, one must branch off on his or her own and be alone. She is ?lured? and ?quickly? sets off; spontaneity of feeling dominates Wordsworth here; rational, careful disappears. She is governed by her passions and whims rather than the rules that would suggest it proper to stay on the ?public road.? Encountering nature, and truly appreciating all it has to offer, is a singular, rather than collective experience. This singularity of experience seems to relate to what her brother, William Wordsworth, wrote in poems like Tintern Abbey; that one must relate with nature on one?s own terms, and to not be governed by what others might think and see. Each person?s relationship with the natural world is unique.