’had learned the meaning of all winds,
  Of blasts of every tone,’

and where he

        ’had been alone,
  Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
  That came to him, and left him, on the heights.’

By so doing he will be better able to realize the spirit of the poem, than by trying to identify the site either of the “unfinished sheep-fold,” or of the house named the “Evening Star.”  What Wordsworth said to the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge in reference to ‘The Brothers’ has been quoted in the note to that poem, p. 203.  On the same occasion he remarked, in reference to ‘Michael’: 

“‘Michael’ was founded on the son of an old couple having become dissolute, and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd having been seven years in building up a sheep-fold in a solitary valley.”

(’Memoirs of Wordsworth’, by the late Bishop of Lincoln, vol. ii. p. 305.)

The following extracts from Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal, show the carefulness with which the poem ‘Michael’ was composed, and the frequent revisions which it underwent: 

  ’Oct. 11 [1800.] “We walked up Green-head ghyll in search of a
  sheepfold....  The sheepfold is falling away.  It is built nearly in the
  form of a heart unequally divided.”

  13.  “William composing in the evening.”

  15.  “W. composed a little.” ...  “W. again composed at the sheepfold
  after dinner.”

  18.  “W. worked all the morning at the sheepfold, but in vain.  He lay
  down till 7 o’clock, but did not sleep.”

  19.  “William got to work.”

  20.  “W. worked in the morning at the sheepfold.”

  21.  “W. had been unsuccessful in the morning at the sheepfold.”

  22.  “W. composed, without much success, at the sheepfold.”

  23.  “W. was not successful in composition in the evening.”

  24.  “W. was only partly successful in composition.”

  26.  “W. composed a good deal all the morning.”

  28.  “W. could not compose much; fatigued himself with altering.”

  30.  “W. worked at his poem all the morning.”

  Nov. 10.  “W. at the sheepfold.”

  12.  “W. has been working at the sheepfold.”

  Dec. 9.  “W. finished his poem to-day."’

It is impossible to say with certainty that the entry under Dec. 9 refers to ‘Michael’, but if it does, it is evident that Wordsworth wrought continuously at this poem for nearly two months.

On April 9, 1801, Wordsworth wrote to Thomas Poole: 

  “In writing it” (’Michael’), “I had your character often before my
  eyes; and sometimes thought that I was delineating such a man as you
  yourself would have been, under the same circumstances.”

The following is part of a letter written by Wordsworth to Charles James Fox in 1802, and sent with a copy of “Lyrical Ballads”: