Their route would be from Grasmere by Red Bank, over by High Close to Elter Water, by Colwith into Yewdale, on to Waterhead; then probably, from Coniston over Walna Scar, into Duddondale, and thence to Bootle. Like a gaunt shaggy Porter forced to wait In days of old romance at Archimago's gate. See Spenser's _Faërie Queene_, book i. canto i. stanza 8. ... the liveliest bird That in wild Arden's brakes was ever heard. Compare _As you like it_, act II. scene 5. And soon approach Diana's Looking-glass! To Loughrigg-tarn, etc. See the note appended by Wordsworth to the sequel to this poem. A glimpse I caught of that Abode, by Thee Designed to rise in humble privacy. He imagines the house which Sir George Beaumont intended to build at Loughrigg Tarn, but which he never erected, to be really built by his friend, very much as in the sonnet named _Anticipation, October, 1803_, he supposes England to have been invaded, and the battle fought in which "the Invaders were laid low." ... behold a Peasant stand On high, a kerchief waving in her hand! See the Fenwick note preceding the poem. ... a barren ridge we scale; Descend and reach, in Yewdale's depths, a plain. They went up Little Langdale, I think, past the Tarn to Fell Foot, and crossed over the ridge of Tilberthwaite, into Yewdale by the copper mines. Under a rock too steep for man to tread, Where sheltered from the north and bleak north-west Aloft the Raven hangs a visible nest, Fearless of all assaults that would her brood molest. There is a Raven crag in Yewdale, evidently the one referred to in this passage, and also in the passage in the first book of _The Prelude_ (see vol. iii. p. 142), beginning-- Oh! when I have hung Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock But ill sustained, etc. ... toward the lowly Grange Press forward, To Waterhead at the top of Coniston Lake. In connection with Loughrigg Tarn, compare the note to the poem beginning-- So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive, and also the Biographical Sketch of Professor Archer Butler, prefixed to his _Sermons_, vol. i.--ED. FOOTNOTES: [A] LOUGHRIGG TARN, alluded to in the foregoing _Epistle_, resembles, though much smaller in compass, the Lake Nemi, or _Speculum Dianæ_ as it is often called, not only in its clear waters and circular form, and the beauty immediately surrounding it, but also as being overlooked by the eminence of Langdale Pikes as Lake Nemi is by that of Monte Calvo. Since this _Epistle_ was written Loughrigg Tarn has lost much of its beauty by the felling of many natural clumps of wood, relics of the old forest, particularly upon the farm called "The Oaks" from the abundance of that tree which grew there.