Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 2 (of 2)Wordsworth, Dorothy
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Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Wordsworth, Dorothy
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Diaries; Wordsworth, Dorothy, 1771-1855 -- Diaries; Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850 -- Family
The impression was, as we advanced up to the head of this first reach,
as if the glen were nothing, its loneliness and retirement--as if it
made up no part of my feeling: the mountains were all in all. That which
fronted us--I have forgotten its name--was exceedingly lofty, the
surface stony, nay, the whole mountain was one mass of stone, wrinkled
and puckered up together. At the second and last reach--for it is not a
winding vale--it makes a quick turning almost at right angles to the
first; and now we are in the depths of the mountains; no trees in the
glen, only green pasturage for sheep, and here and there a plot of
hay-ground, and something that tells of former cultivation. I observed
this to the guide, who said that formerly the glen had had many
inhabitants, and that there, as elsewhere in the Highlands, there had
been a great deal of corn where now the lands were left waste, and
nothing fed upon them but cattle. I cannot attempt to describe the
mountains. I can only say that I thought those on our right--for the
other side was only a continued high ridge or craggy barrier, broken
along the top into petty spiral forms--were the grandest I had ever
seen. It seldom happens that mountains in a very clear air look
exceedingly high, but these, though we could see the whole of them to
their very summits, appeared to me more majestic in their own nakedness
than our imaginations could have conceived them to be, had they been
half hidden by clouds, yet showing some of their highest pinnacles. They
were such forms as Milton might be supposed to have had in his mind when
he applied to Satan that sublime expression--
His stature reached the sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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