[Footnote 2: In the original MS. there is no title. The above is a
descriptive one, given by the editor.--ED.]
Alfoxden, _January 20th 1798_.--The green paths down the hill-sides are
channels for streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of
water running between the ridges, the sheep are gathered together on the
slopes. After the wet dark days, the country seems more populous. It
peoples itself in the sunbeams. The garden, mimic of spring, is gay with
flowers. The purple-starred hepatica spreads itself in the sun, and the
clustering snow-drops put forth their white heads, at first upright,
ribbed with green, and like a rosebud when completely opened, hanging
their heads downwards, but slowly lengthening their slender stems. The
slanting woods of an unvarying brown, showing the light through the thin
net-work of their upper boughs. Upon the highest ridge of that round
hill covered with planted oaks, the shafts of the trees show in the
light like the columns of a ruin.
_21st._ Walked on the hill-tops--a warm day. Sate under the firs in the
park. The tops of the beeches of a brown-red, or crimson. Those oaks,
fanned by the sea breeze, thick with feathery sea-green moss, as a grove
not stripped of its leaves. Moss cups more proper than acorns for fairy
goblets.
_22nd._--Walked through the wood to Holford. The ivy twisting round the
oaks like bristled serpents. The day cold--a warm shelter in the
hollies, capriciously bearing berries. Query: Are the male and female
flowers on separate trees?
_23rd._--Bright sunshine, went out at 3 o'clock. The sea perfectly calm
blue, streaked with deeper colour by the clouds, and tongues or points
of sand; on our return of a gloomy red. The sun gone down. The crescent
moon, Jupiter, and Venus. The sound of the sea distinctly heard on the
tops of the hills, which we could never hear in summer. We attribute
this partly to the bareness of the trees, but chiefly to the absence of
the singing of birds, the hum of insects, that noiseless noise which
lives in the summer air.[3] The villages marked out by beautiful beds of
smoke. The turf fading into the mountain road. The scarlet flowers of
the moss.
[Footnote 3: Compare Keats, _Miscellaneous Poems_--
There crept
A little noiseless noise amongst the leaves
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves. ED.