Have told this fancy, two or three, perhaps,
Years after we are gone and in our graves,
When they have cause to speak of this wild place,
May call it by the name of Emma's Dell."
It is hardly necessary to mention that Miss Wordsworth is more than once in the poems referred to as the poet's sister "Emma" or "Emmeline." It is, perhaps, rather difficult to determine on what precise spot they stood when this poem was composed, and to which the name of "Emma's Dell" was given. Professor Knight, in his very interesting work, "The English Lake District, as interpreted by Wordsworth," concludes that the place is where the brook takes a "sudden turning" a few hundred yards above Goody Bridge; but there are other spots in the brook a little further up the valley to which the description in the poem is probably equally applicable.
Another poem of the same series may appropriately here find a place, containing, as it does, a loving allusion to Dorothy. This time it is Miss Wordsworth herself who gives the name of William's Peak to the rugged summit of Stone Arthur, situated between Green Head Ghyll (the scene of Wordsworth's pastoral poem "Michael") and Tongue Ghyll, a short distance on the right-hand, side of the road leading from Grasmere to Keswick:—
"There is an Eminence,—of these our hills
The last that parleys with the setting sun;
We can behold it from our orchard-seat;
And, when at evening we pursue our walk