_Wednesday._--A very rainy day. I made a shoe. Wm. and John went to fish in Langdale. In the evening I went above the house, and gathered flowers, which I planted, foxgloves, etc. On Sunday[23] Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge and Hartley came. The day was very warm. We sailed to the foot of Loughrigg. They staid with us three weeks, and till the Thursday following, from 1st till the 23rd of July.[24] On the Friday preceding their departure, we drank tea at the island. The weather was delightful, and on the Sunday we made a great fire, and drank tea in Bainriggs with the Simpsons. I accompanied Mrs. C. to Wytheburne, and returned with W. to tea at Mr. Simpson's. It was exceedingly hot, but the day after, Friday 24th July,[25] still hotter. All the morning I was engaged in unpacking our Somersetshire goods. The house was a hot oven. I was so weary, I could not walk: so I went out, and sate with Wm. in the orchard. We had a delightful half-hour in the warm still evening. [Footnote 23: Coleridge arrived at Grasmere on Sunday 29th June.--ED.] [Footnote 24: The dates here given are confusing. S. T. C. says he was ill at Grasmere, and stayed a fortnight. In a letter to Tom Poole he says he arrived at Keswick on 24th July, which was a Thursday.--ED.] [Footnote 25: That Friday was the 25th July. The two next dates were incorrectly entered by Dorothy.--ED.] * * * * * * _Saturday, 26th._--Still hotter. I sate with W. in the orchard all the morning, and made my shoe.... _Sunday, 27th._--Very warm.... I wrote out _Ruth_ in the afternoon. In the morning, I read Mr. Knight's _Landscape_.[26] After tea we rowed down to Loughrigg Fell, visited the white foxglove, gathered wild strawberries, and walked up to view Rydale. We lay a long time looking at the lake; the shores all dim with the scorching sun. The ferns were turning yellow, that is, here and there one was quite turned. We walked round by Benson's wood home. The lake was now most still, and reflected the beautiful yellow and blue and purple and grey colours of the sky. We heard a strange sound in the Bainriggs wood, as we were floating on the water; it _seemed_ in the wood, but it must have been above it, for presently we saw a raven very high above us. It called out, and the dome of the sky seemed to echo the sound. It called again and again as it flew onwards, and the mountains gave back the sound, seeming as if from their centre; a musical bell-like answering to the bird's hoarse voice. We heard both the call of the bird, and the echo, after we could see him no longer....[27] [Footnote 26: _The Landscape: a Didactic Poem in three Books._ By Richard Payne Knight. 1794.--ED.] [Footnote 27: Compare _The Excursion_, book iv. II. 1185-1195.--ED.] _Monday._--Received a letter from Coleridge enclosing one from Mr. Davy about the _Lyrical Ballads_. Intensely hot.... William went into the wood, and altered his poems....