"Yes, they wander on In gladness all: but thee, methinks, most glad, My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And hungered after nature, many a year; In the great city pent, winning thy way, With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain, And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath flowers! richlier beam, ye clouds! Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves! And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my friend, Struck with deep joy, may stand as I have stood, Silent with swimming sense: yea, gazing round On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily; and of such hues As veil the Almighty Spirit when yet he makes Spirits perceive his presence." The woman in the house,--her husband was out in the fields,--and her sister, had neither of them heard of such a thing as a poet. When I asked leave to see the house and garden, on account of a gentleman who had once lived there, "Yes," said the landlady, quite a young woman, "a gentleman called one day, some time ago, and said he wished to drink a glass of ale in this house, because a great man had lived in it." "A great man, did he say? Why, he was a poet." "A poet, sir! what is that?" "Don't you know what a poet is?" "No, sir." "But you know what a ballad singer is?" "Oh, yes; to be sure." "Well, a poet makes ballads and songs, and things of that kind." "Oh, lauks-o'me! why the gentleman said it was a great man." "Well, he was just what I tell you--a poet--a ballad maker, and all that. Nothing more, I assure you." "Good lauk-a-me! how could the gentleman say it was a great man! Is it the same man you mean, think you?" "Oh! no doubt of it. But let me see your garden." The sister went to show it me. There were, as I have said, two gardens, lying high above the house, so that you could see over part of the town, and, in the other direction, the upland slopes and hills. Behind the garden was still the orchard, in which Coleridge had so often mused. Returning toward the house, the remains of a fine bay-tree caught my attention, amid the ruins of the garden near the house, now defaced with weeds, and scattered with old tubs and empty beer barrels. "That," said I, "was once a fine bay-tree." "Ay, that was here when we came." "No doubt of it. That poet planted it, as sure as it is there. That is just one of those people's tricks. Where they go they are always planting that tree." "Good Lord! do they? What odd men they must be!" said the young woman.