In 1786, in anticipation of leaving school, he wrote some sweet verses, in which he speaks, with a sad fondness, of the old region round about Hawkshead, and vows, with a lover’s heart, never to forget its beauty, but to turn towards it wherever he may be, as to the shrine of his idolatry. “Thus from the precincts of the west The sun, while sinking down to rest, Though his departing radiance fail To illuminate the hollow vale, A lingering lustre fondly throws On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.” The muse had now fairly possessed him, and he was destined to have a triumphant career as the high priest of song. Among his earliest sonnets is the following, which is the last quotation I shall give from these boyish effusions. “Calm is all nature as a resting wheel: The kine are couched upon the dewy grass; The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is cropping audibly his later meal: Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal O’er vale and mountain and the starless sky. Now in this blank of things a harmony, Home-felt and home-created, comes to heal That grief for which the senses will supply Fresh food, for only then while memory Is hushed am I at rest. My friends! restrain Those busy cares that would allay my pain; Oh, leave me to myself, nor let me feel The officious touch that makes me droop again!” His school-days at Hawkshead were now drawing to a close, but before we leave this part of his life, this genial seed-time from which he subsequently reaped so glorious a harvest, it will be well to add a few more particulars respecting the locality of Hawkshead, and the general discipline of its old Elizabethan grammar school, as a sort of supplement to the previous history. And, first of all, a word about Esthwaite. [C] “Esthwaite, though a lovely scene in its summer garniture of woods, has no features of permanent grandeur to rely on. A wet or gloomy day, even in summer, reduces it to little more than a wildish pond, surrounded by miniature hills; and the sole circumstances which restore the sense of a romantic region, and an Alpine character, are the knowledge (but not the sense) of endless sylvan scenery, stretching for twenty miles to the sea-side, and the towering groups of Langdale and Grasmere fells, which look over the little pasture barrier of Esthwaite, from distances of eight, ten, and fourteen miles.”