We resolved that the whole of this beautiful day should be devoted to catching something of that indefinable spirit of the Westmoreland hills which had made a poet of Wordsworth, and through him taught the love of Nature to countless thousands. A few steps took us away from the town, the inn, and the other tourists, into a quiet woodland path leading toward the lake, at the end of which we stood
“On long Winander’s eastern shore.”
“Winander” is the old form of Windermere. The lake was the scene of many of Wordsworth’s boyhood experiences.
| “When summer came, Our pastime was, on bright half-holidays, To sweep along the plain of Windermere With rival oars; and the selected bourne Was now an Island musical with birds That sang and ceased not; now a Sister Isle Beneath the oaks’ umbrageous covert, sown With lilies of the valley like a field; And now a third small Island, where survived In solitude the ruins of a shrine Once to Our Lady dedicate, and served Daily with chaunted rites. In such a race, So ended, disappointment could be none, Uneasiness, or pain, or jealousy: We rested in the shade, all pleased alike, Conquered and conqueror. Thus the pride of strength, And the vainglory of superior skill, Were tempered.” |
Wordsworth’s boyhood was probably very much like that of other boys. He tells us that he was “stiff, moody, and of a violent temper”—so much so that he went up into his grandfather’s attic one day, while under the resentment of some indignity, determined to destroy himself. But his heart failed. On another occasion he relates that while at his grandfather’s house in Penrith, he and his eldest brother Richard were whipping tops in the large drawing-room. “The walls were hung round with family pictures, and I said to my brother, ‘Dare you strike your whip through that old lady’s petticoat?’ He replied, ’No, I won’t.’ ‘Then,’ said I, ‘here goes!’ and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat; for which, no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished. But, possibly from some want of judgment in the punishments inflicted, I had become perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise.” Lowell remarks upon this incident: “Just so do we find him afterward striking his defiant lash through the hooped petticoat of the artificial style of poetry, and proudly unsubdued by the punishment of the Reviewers.” When scarcely ten years old, it was his joy
“To range the open heights where woodcocks run.”
He would spend half the night “scudding away from snare to snare,” sometimes yielding to the temptation to take the birds caught in the snare of some other lad. He felt the average boy’s terror inspired by a guilty conscience, for he says:—
| “And when the deed was done, I heard among the solitary hills Low breathings coming after me, and sounds Of undistinguishable motion, steps Almost as silent as the turf they trod.” |
Across the lake from where we stood, and over beyond the hills on the other side, is the quaint old town of Hawkshead, where Wordsworth was sent to school at the age of nine years. The little schoolhouse may still be seen, but it is of small import. The real scenes of Wordsworth’s early education were the woods and vales, the solitary cliffs, the rocks and pools, and the Lake of Esthwaite, five miles round, which he was fond of encircling in his early morning walks, that he might sit