It had been called to his mind by the dying away of the stunning of the
waterfall when he got behind a stone....
_Friday, 23rd April 1802._--It being a beautiful morning we set off at
11 o'clock, intending to stay out of doors all the morning. We went
towards Rydale, and before we got to Tom Dawson's we determined to go
under Nab Scar. Thither we went. The sun shone, and we were lazy.
Coleridge pitched upon several places to sit down upon, but we could not
be all of one mind respecting sun and shade, so we pushed on to the foot
of the Scar. It was very grand when we looked up, very stony, here and
there a budding tree. William observed that the umbrella yew tree, that
breasts the wind, had lost its character as a tree, and had become
something like to solid wood. Coleridge and I pushed on before. We left
William sitting on the stones, feasting with silence; and Coleridge and
I sat down upon a rocky seat--a couch it might be under the bower of
William's eglantine, Andrew's Broom. He was below us, and we could see
him. He came to us, and repeated his poems[60] while we sate beside him
upon the ground. He had made himself a seat in the crumbling ground.
Afterwards we lingered long, looking into the vales; Ambleside vale,
with the copses, the village under the hill, and the green fields;
Rydale, with a lake all alive and glittering, yet but little stirred by
breezes; and our dear Grasmere, making a little round lake of nature's
own, with never a house, never a green field, but the copses and the
bare hills enclosing it, and the river flowing out of it. Above rose the
Coniston Fells, in their own shape and colour--not man's hills, but all
for themselves, the sky and the clouds, and a few wild creatures. C.
went to search for something new. We saw him climbing up towards a rock.
He called us, and we found him in a bower--the sweetest that was ever
seen. The rock on one side is very high, and all covered with ivy, which
hung loosely about, and bore bunches of brown berries. On the other side
it was higher than my head. We looked down on the Ambleside vale, that
seemed to wind away from us, the village lying under the hill. The
fir-tree island was reflected beautifully. About this bower there is
mountain-ash, common-ash, yew-tree, ivy, holly, hawthorn, grasses, and
flowers, and a carpet of moss. Above, at the top of the rock, there is
another spot. It is scarce a bower, a little parlour only, not enclosed
by walls, but shaped out for a resting-place by the rocks, and the
ground rising about it. It had a sweet moss carpet. We resolved to go
and plant flowers in both these places to-morrow. We wished for Mary and
Sara. Dined late. After dinner Wm. and I worked in the garden. C.
received a letter from Sara.
[Footnote 60: See _The Waterfall and the Eglantine_, and _The Oak and
the Broom_, vol. ii. pp. 170, 174.--ED.]
_Saturday, 24th._--A very wet day. William called me out to see a
waterfall behind the barberry tree. We walked in the evening to Rydale.
Coleridge and I lingered behind. C. stopped up the little runnel by the
road-side to make a lake. We all stood to look at Glow-worm Rock--a
primrose that grew there, and just looked out on the road from its own
sheltered bower.[61] The clouds moved, as William observed, in one
regular body like a multitude in motion--a sky all clouds over, not one
cloud.[62] On our return it broke a little out, and we saw here and
there a star. One appeared but for a moment in a pale blue sky.
[Footnote 61: See _The Primrose of the Rock_, vol. vii. p. 274.--ED.]
[Footnote 62: Compare _To the Clouds_, vol. viii. p. 142.--ED.]
_Sunday, 25th April._--After breakfast we set off with Coleridge towards
Keswick. Wilkinson overtook us near the Potter's, and interrupted our
discourse. C. got into a gig with Mr. Beck, and drove away from us. A
shower came on, but it was soon over. We spent the morning in the
orchard reading the _Epithalamium_ of Spenser; walked backwards and
forwards....
_Monday, 26th._--I copied Wm.'s poems for Coleridge....
_Tuesday, 27th._--A fine morning. Mrs. Luff called. I walked with her to
the boat-house. William met me at the top of the hill with his
fishing-rod in his hand. I turned with him, and we sate on the hill
looking to Rydale. I left him, intending to join him, but he came home,
and said his loins would not stand the pulling he had had. We sate in
the orchard. In the evening W. began to write _The Tinker_; we had a
letter and verses from Coleridge.
_Wednesday, 28th April._-- ... I copied _The Prioress's Tale_. William
was in the orchard. I went to him; he worked away at his poem.... I
happened to say that when I was a child I would not have pulled a
strawberry blossom. I left him, and wrote out _The Manciple's Tale_. At
dinner time he came in with the poem of _Children gathering
Flowers_,[63] but it was not quite finished, and it kept him long off
his dinner. It is now done. He is working at _The Tinker_. He promised
me he would get his tea, and do no more, but I have got mine an hour and
a quarter, and he has scarcely begun his. We have let the bright sun go
down without walking. Now a heavy shower comes on, and I guess we shall
not walk at all. I wrote a few lines to Coleridge. Then we walked
backwards and forwards between our house and Olliff's. We called upon T.
Hutchinson, and Bell Addison. William left me sitting on a stone. When
we came in we corrected the Chaucers, but I could not finish them
to-night.
[Footnote 63: See _Foresight_, vol. ii. p. 298.--ED.]
_Thursday, 29th._-- ... After I had written down _The Tinker_, which
William finished this morning, Luff called. He was very lame, limped
into the kitchen. He came on a little pony. We then went to John's
Grove, sate a while at first; afterwards William lay, and I lay, in the
trench under the fence--he with his eyes shut, and listening to the
waterfalls and the birds. There was no one waterfall above another--it
was a sound of waters in the air--the voice of the air. William heard me
breathing, and rustling now and then, but we both lay still, and unseen
by one another. He thought that it would be so sweet thus to lie in the
grave, to hear the peaceful sounds of the earth, and just to know that
our dear friends were near. The lake was still; there was a boat out.
Silver How reflected with delicate purple and yellowish hues, as I have
seen spar; lambs on the island, and running races together by the
half-dozen, in the round field near us. The copses greenish, hawthorns
green, ... cottages smoking. As I lay down on the grass, I observed the
glittering silver line on the ridge of the backs of the sheep, owing to
their situation respecting the sun, which made them look beautiful, but
with something of strangeness, like animals of another kind, as if
belonging to a more splendid world.... I got mullins and pansies....
_Friday, April 30th._--We came into the orchard directly after
breakfast, and sate there. The lake was calm, the day cloudy.... Two
fishermen by the lake side. William began to write the poem of _The
Celandine_.[64] ... Walked backwards and forwards with William--he
repeated his poem to me, then he got to work again and would not give
over. He had not finished his dinner till 5 o'clock. After dinner we
took up the fur gown into the Hollins above. We found a sweet seat, and
thither we will often go. We spread the gown, put on each a cloak, and
there we lay. William fell asleep, he had a bad headache owing to his
having been disturbed the night before, with reading C.'s letter. I did
not sleep, but lay with half-shut eyes looking at the prospect as on a
vision almost, I was so resigned[65] to it. Loughrigg Fell was the most
distant hill, then came the lake, slipping in between the copses. Above
the copse, the round swelling field; nearer to me, a wild intermixture
of rocks, trees, and patches of grassy ground. When we turned the corner
of our little shelter, we saw the church and the whole vale. It is a
blessed place. The birds were about us on all sides. Skobbies, robins,
bull-finches, and crows, now and then flew over our heads, as we were
warned by the sound of the beating of the air above. We stayed till the
light of day was going, and the little birds had begun to settle their
singing. But there was a thrush not far off, that seemed to sing louder
and clearer than the thrushes had sung when it was quite day. We came in
at 8 o'clock, got tea, wrote to Coleridge, and I wrote to Mrs. Clarkson
part of a letter. We went to bed at 20 minutes past 11, with prayers
that William might sleep well.
[Footnote 64: See vol. ii. p. 300.--ED.]
[Footnote 65: "Resigned" is curiously used in the Lake District. A
woman there once told me that Mr. Ruskin was "very much resigned to
his own company."--ED.]
_Saturday, May 1st._--Rose not till half-past 8, a heavenly morning. As
soon as breakfast was over, we went into the garden, and sowed the
scarlet beans about the house. It was a clear sky.
I sowed the flowers, William helped me. We then went and sate in the
orchard till dinner time. It was very hot. William wrote _The
Celandine_.[66] We planned a shed, for the sun was too much for us.
After dinner, we went again to our old resting-place in the Hollins
under the rock. We first lay under the Holly, where we saw nothing but
the holly tree, and a budding elm tree mossed, with the sky above our
heads. But that holly tree had a beauty about it more than its own,
knowing as we did when we arose. When the sun had got low enough, we
went to the Rock Shade. Oh, the overwhelming beauty of the vale below,
greener than green! Two ravens flew high, high in the sky, and the sun
shone upon their bellies and their wings, long after there was none of
his light to be seen but a little space on the top of Loughrigg Fell.
Heard the cuckoo to-day, this first of May. We went down to tea at 8
o'clock, and returned after tea. The landscape was fading: sheep and
lambs quiet among the rocks. We walked towards King's, and backwards and
forwards. The sky was perfectly cloudless. _N.B._ it is often so. Three
solitary stars in the middle of the blue vault, one or two on the points
of the high hills.
[Footnote 66: Doubtless the second of the two poems, beginning thus--