Written in Germany, 1799.  This is an extract from the Poem on my own poetical education.  This practice of making an instrument of their own fingers is known to most boys, though some are more skilful at it than others.  William Raincock of Rayrigg, a fine spirited lad, took the lead of all my schoolfellows in this art.

129. *_To the Cuckoo_. [II.] Composed in the Orchard at Town-End, 1804.

130. *_A Night-piece_. [III.]

Composed on the road between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden, extempore.  I distinctly remember the very moment when I was struck, as described, ’He looks up at the clouds,’ &c.

131. *_Yew-trees_. [V.]

Grasmere, 1803.  These Yew-trees are still standing, but the spread of that at Lorton is much diminished by mutilation.  I will here mention that a little way up the hill on the road leading from Rossthwaite to Stonethwaite lay the trunk of a yew-tree which appeared as you approached, so vast was its diameter, like the entrance of a cave, and not a small one.  Calculating upon what I have observed of the slow growth of this tree in rocky situations, and of its durability, I have often thought that the one I am describing must have been as old as the Christian era.  The tree lay in the line of a fence.  Great masses of its ruins were strewn about, and some had been rolled down the hill-side and lay near the road at the bottom.  As you approached the tree you were struck with the number of shrubs and young plants, ashes, &c. which had found a bed upon the decayed trunk and grew to no inconsiderable height, forming, as it were, a part of the hedgerow.  In no part of England, or of Europe, have I ever seen a yew-tree at all approaching this in magnitude, as it must have stood.  By the bye, Hutton, the Old Guide of Keswick, had been so imprest with the remains of this tree that he used gravely to tell strangers that there could be no doubt of its having been in existence before the Flood.

132. *_Nutting_. [VI.]

Written in Germany:  intended as part of a poem on my own life, but struck out as not being wanted there.  Like most of my schoolfellows I was an impassioned Nutter.  For this pleasure the Vale of Esthwaite, abounding in coppice wood, furnished a very wide range.  These verses arose out of the remembrance of feelings I had often had when a boy, and particularly in the extensive woods that still stretch from the side of Esthwaite Lake towards Graythwaite, the seat of the ancient family of Sandys.

133. *_She was a Phantom of Delight_. [VIII.]

1804.  Town-End.  The germ of this Poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl.  Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious.

134. *_The Nightingale_. [IX.]

Town-End, 1806. [So, but corrected in pencil ‘Written at Coleorton.’]

135. *_Three Years she grew, &c._ [X.]

1799.  Composed in the Hartz Forest. [In pencil on opposite page—­Who?]