Hail in each crag a friend’s familiar face
And clasp the mountain in his mind’s embrace.”
When the boy was ten, the wicked lord who had killed the Chaworth died; and the Newstead inheritance fell to the young poet. We can imagine with what touch of the pride that shivers through so many of his poems, this lad—just lame enough to make him curse that unlucky fate—paced first down the hall at Newstead—thenceforth master there—a Peer of England.
But the estate was left in sorry condition; the mother could not hold it as a residence; so they went to Nottingham—whereabout the boy seems to have had his first schooling. Not long afterward we find him at Harrow, not far out of London, where he makes one or two of the few friendships which abide; there, too, he gives first evidence of his power over language.
It is at about this epoch, also, that on his visits to Nottingham—which is not far from the Chaworth home of Annesley—comes about the spinning of those little webs of romance which are twisted afterward into the beautiful Chaworth “Dream.” It is an old story to tell, yet how everlastingly fresh it keeps!
“The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked