not quite so severe and rugged as the Scotch mountains, but the view
more pleasing and more extensive than the one I got from Ben Venue. The
black tarns at my feet,--Keppel Cove Tarn one of them, according to my
map,--how curious they look! I can just discern the figure of a man
moving by the marge of one of them. Away beyond Ulleswater is a vast
sweep of country flecked here and there by slowly moving cloud shadows.
To the northeast, in places, the backs and sides of the mountains have a
green, pastoral voluptuousness, so smooth and full are they with thick
turf. At other points the rock has fretted through the verdant carpet.
St. Sunday's Crag to the west, across Grisedale, is a steep acclivity
covered with small, loose stones, as if they had been dumped over the
top, and were slowly sliding down; but nowhere do I see great bowlders
strewn about. Patches of black peat are here and there. The little
rills, near and far, are white as milk, so swiftly do they run. On the
more precipitous sides the grass and moss are lodged, and hold like
snow, and are as tender in hue as the first April blades. A multitude of
lakes are in view, and Morecambe Bay to the south. There are sheep
everywhere, loosely scattered, with their lambs; occasionally I hear
them bleat. No other sound is heard but the chirp of the mountain pipit.
I see the wheat-ear flitting here and there. One mountain now lies in
full sunshine, as fat as a seal, wrinkled and dimpled where it turns to
the west, like a fat animal when it bends to lick itself. What a
spectacle is now before me!--all the near mountains in shadow, and the
distant in strong sunlight; I shall not see the like of that again. On
some of the mountains the green vestments are in tatters and rags, so to
speak, and barely cling to them. No heather in view. Toward Windermere
the high peaks and crests are much more jagged and rocky. The air is
filled with the same white, motionless vapor as in Scotland. When the
sun breaks through,--
"Slant watery lights, from parting clouds, apace
Travel along the precipice's base,
Cheering its naked waste of scatter'd stone."
Amid these scenes one comes face to face with nature,
"With the pristine earth,
The planet in its nakedness,"
as he cannot in a wooded country. The primal, abysmal energies, grown
tender and meditative, as it were, thoughtful of the shepherd and his
flocks, and voiceful only in the leaping torrents, look out upon one
near at hand and pass a mute recognition. Wordsworth perpetually refers
to these hills and dales as lonely or lonesome; but his heart was still
more lonely. The outward solitude was congenial to the isolation and
profound privacy of his own soul. "Lonesome," he says of one of these
mountain dales, but
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