frame
  No longer breathe, but all be satisfied. 
  Oh, if such silence be not thanks to God
  For what hath been bestowed, then where, where then
  Shall gratitude find rest?  Mine eyes did ne’er 15
  Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind
  Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts,
  But either she, whom now I have, who now
  Divides with me this loved abode, was there,
  Or not far off.  Where’er my footsteps turned, 20
  Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang;
  The thought of her was like a flash of light
  Or an unseen companionship, a breath
  Or fragrance independent of the wind. 
  In all my goings, in the new and old 25
  Of all my meditations, and in this
  Favourite of all, in this the most of all.... 
  Embrace me then, ye hills, and close me in. 
  Now in the clear and open day I feel
  Your guardianship:  I take it to my heart; 30
  ’Tis like the solemn shelter of the night. 
  But I would call thee beautiful; for mild,
  And soft, and gay, and beautiful thou art,
  Dear valley, having in thy face a smile,
  Though peaceful, full of gladness.  Thou art pleased, 35
  Pleased with thy crags, and woody steeps, thy lake,
  Its one green island, and its winding shores,
  The multitude of little rocky hills,
  Thy church, and cottages of mountain-stone
  Clustered like stars some few, but single most, 40
  And lurking dimly in their shy retreats,
  Or glancing at each other cheerful looks,
  Like separated stars with clouds between.

This Grasmere cottage is identified, much more than Rydal Mount, with Wordsworth’s “poetic prime.”  It had once been a public-house, bearing the sign of the Dove and Olive Bough—­and as such is referred to in ’The Waggoner’—­from which circumstance it was for a long time, and is now usually, called “Dove Cottage.”  A small two storied house, it is described somewhat minutely—­as it was in Wordsworth’s time—­by De Quincey, in his ‘Recollections of the Lakes’, and by the late Bishop of Lincoln, in the ‘Memoirs’ of his uncle.

“The front of it faces the lake; behind is a small plot of orchard and garden ground, in which there is a spring and rocks; the enclosure shelves upwards towards the woody sides of the mountains above it.” [A]

The following is De Quincey’s description of it, as he saw it in the summer of 1807.

“A white cottage, with two yew trees breaking the glare of its white walls” (these yews still stand on the eastern side of the cottage).  “A little semi-vestibule between two doors prefaced the entrance into what might be considered the principal room of the cottage.  It was an oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, sixteen feet long, and twelve broad; wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark polished oak, slightly