[Footnote R:  In one of the small mountain farm-houses near Hawkshead.—­Ed.]

[Footnote S:  Compare ‘Paradise Lost’, book viii. l. 528: 

  ‘Walks, and the melody of birds.’

Ed.]

[Footnote T:  Dr. Cradock has suggested to me the probable course of that morning walk.

“All that can be safely said as to the course of that memorable morning walk is that, in that neighbourhood, a view of the sea can only be obtained at a considerable elevation; also that if the words ‘in front the sea lay laughing’ are to be taken as rigidly exact, the poet’s progress towards Hawkshead must have been in a direction mainly southerly, and therefore from the country north of that place.  These and all other conditions of the description are answered in several parts of the range of hills lying between Elterwater and Hawkshead.”

See Appendix, Note III. p. 389.—­Ed.]

[Footnote U:  Compare the sixth line of the poem, beginning

  ‘This Lawn, a carpet all alive.’

(1829.) And Horace, ‘Epistolae’, lib. i. ep. xi. l. 28: 

  ‘Strenua nos exercet inertia.’

Ed.]

[Footnote V:  The “brook” is Sawrey beck, and the “long ascent” is the second of the two, in crossing from Windermere to Hawkshead, and going over the ridge between the two Sawreys.  It is only at that point that a brook can be heard “murmuring in the vale.”  The road is the old one, above the ferry, marked in the Ordnance Survey Map, by the Briers, not the new road which makes a curve to the south, and cannot be described as a “sharp rising.”—­Ed.]

* * * * *

BOOK FIFTH

BOOKS

  When Contemplation, like the night-calm felt
  Through earth and sky, spreads widely, and sends deep
  Into the soul its tranquillising power,
  Even then I sometimes grieve for thee, O Man,
  Earth’s paramount Creature! not so much for woes 5
  That thou endurest; heavy though that weight be,
  Cloud-like it mounts, or touched with light divine
  Doth melt away; but for those palms achieved,
  Through length of time, by patient exercise
  Of study and hard thought; there, there, it is 10
  That sadness finds its fuel.  Hitherto,
  In progress through this Verse, my mind hath looked
  Upon the speaking face of earth and heaven
  As her prime teacher, intercourse with man
  Established by the sovereign Intellect, 15
  Who through that bodily image hath diffused,
  As might appear to the eye of fleeting time,
  A deathless spirit.  Thou also, man! hast wrought,
  For commerce of thy nature with herself,
  Things that aspire to unconquerable life; 20
  And yet we feel—­we cannot choose but feel—­