A summer forenoon—The Author reaches a ruined Cottage upon a Common, and there meets with a revered Friend, the Wanderer, of whose education and course of life he gives an account[3]—The Wanderer, while resting under the shade of the Trees that surround the Cottage, relates the History of its last Inhabitant.
'Twas summer, and the sun had mounted high:
Southward the landscape indistinctly glared
Through a pale steam;[T] but all the northern downs,
In clearest air ascending, showed far off
A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung
From brooding clouds; shadows that lay in spots[4]
Determined and unmoved, with steady beams
Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed;
To him most pleasant who on soft cool moss[5]