As at a fountain; and on winter nights, Down to this very time, when storm and rain Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day, While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees, Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock 330 In a strong wind, some working of the spirit, Some inward agitations thence are brought, Whate'er their office, whether to beguile Thoughts over busy in the course they took, Or animate an hour of vacant ease. 335 * * * * * FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT [Footnote A: Compare Shakespeare's "Stealing and giving odour." ('Twelfth Night', act I. scene i. l. 7.)--Ed.] [Footnote B: Mary Hutchinson.--Ed.] [Footnote C: Compare the 'Ode, Intimations of Immortality', stanzas v. and ix.--Ed.] [Footnote D: Either amongst the Lorton Fells, or the north-western slopes of Skiddaw.--Ed.] [Footnote E: His sister.--Ed.] [Footnote F: The year was evidently 1783, but the locality is difficult to determine. It may have been one or other of two places. Wordsworth's father died at Penrith, and it was there that the sons went for their Christmas holiday. The road from Penrith to Hawkshead was by Kirkstone Pass, and Ambleside; and the "led palfreys" sent to take the boys home would certainly come through the latter town. Now there are only two roads from Ambleside to Hawkshead, which meet at a point about a mile north of Hawkshead, called in the Ordnance map "Outgate." The eastern road is now chiefly used by carriages, being less hilly and better made than the western one. The latter would be quite as convenient as the former for horses. If one were to walk out from Hawkshead village to the place where the two roads separate at "Outgate," and then ascend the ridge between them, he would find several places from which he could overlook _both_ roads "far stretched," were the view not now intercepted by numerous plantations. (The latter are of comparatively recent growth.) Dr. Cradock,--to whom I am indebted for this, and for many other suggestions as to localities alluded to by Wordsworth,--thinks that "a point, marked on the map as 'High Crag' between the two roads, and about three-quarters of a mile from their point of divergence, answers the description as well as any other. It may be nearly two miles from Hawkshead, a distance of which an active eager school-boy would think nothing. The 'blasted hawthorn' and the 'naked wall' are probably things of the past as much as the 'single sheep.'"