The old hall of Threlkeld has long been a ruin. Its only habitable part has been a farmhouse for many years.
And both the undying fish that swim
Through Bowscale-tarn did wait on him.
Bowscale Tarn is to the north of Blencathara. Its stream joins the Caldew river.
And into caves where Faeries sing
He hath entered.
Compare the previous reference to Blencathara's "rugged coves." There are many such on this mountain.
Alas! the impassioned minstrel did not know
How, by Heaven's grace, this Clifford's heart was framed:
How he, long forced in humble walks to go,
Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.
After restoration to his ancestral estates, the Shepherd-lord preferred to live in comparative retirement. He spent most of his time at Barden Tower (see [notes] to The White Doe of Rylstone), which he enlarged, and where he lived with a small retinue. He was much at Bolton (which was close at hand), and there he studied astronomy and alchemy, aided by the monks. It is to the time when he lived at Threlkeld, however—wandering as a shepherd-boy, over the ridges and around the coves of Blencathara, amongst the groves of Mosedale, and by the lofty springs of Glenderamakin—that Wordsworth refers in the lines,
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
He was at Flodden in 1513, when nearly sixty years of age, leading there the "flower of Craven."
From Penigent to Pendle Hill,
From Linton to long Addingham,
And all that Craven's coasts did till,
They with the lusty Clifford came.