’This sequestered scene was almost inaccessible till of late, that ridings have been cut on both sides of the river, and the most interesting points laid open by judicious thinnings in the woods.  Here a tributary stream rushes from a waterfall, and bursts through a woody glen to mingle its waters with the Wharf:  there the Wharf itself is nearly lost in a deep cleft in the rock, and next becomes a horned flood enclosing a woody island—­sometimes it reposes for a moment, and then resumes its native character, lively, irregular, and impetuous.

’The cleft mentioned above is the tremendous STRID.  This chasm, being incapable of receiving the winter floods, has formed on either side a broad strand of naked gritstone full of rock-basins, or “pots of the Linn,” which bear witness to the restless impetuosity of so many Northern torrents.  But, if here Wharf is lost to the eye, it amply repays another sense by its deep and solemn roar, like “the Voice of the angry Spirit of the Waters,” heard far above and beneath, amidst the silence of the surrounding woods.

’The terminating object of the landscape is the remains of Barden Tower, interesting from their form and situation, and still more so from the recollections which they excite.’

325. *_The White Doe of Rylstone_.

The earlier half of this poem was composed at Stockton-upon-Tees, when Mary and I were on a visit to her eldest brother, Mr. Hutchinson, at the close of the year 1807.  The country is flat, and the weather was rough.  I was accustomed every day to walk to and fro under the shelter of a row of stacks, in a field at a small distance from the town, and there poured forth my verses aloud, as freely as they would come.  Mary reminds me that her brother stood upon the punctilio of not sitting down to dinner till I joined the party; and it frequently happened that I did not make my appearance till too late, so that she was made uncomfortable.  I here beg her pardon for this and similar transgressions during the whole course of our wedded life.  To my beloved sister the same apology is due.

When, from the visit just mentioned, we returned to Town-End, Grasmere, I proceeded with the poem.  It may be worth while to note as a caution to others who may cast their eyes on these memoranda, that the skin having been rubbed off my heel by my wearing too tight a shoe, though I desisted from walking, I found that the irritation of the wounded part was kept up by the act of composition, to a degree that made it necessary to give my constitution a holiday.  A rapid cure was the consequence.

Poetic excitement, when accompanied by protracted labour in composition, has throughout my life brought on more or less bodily derangement.  Nevertheless I am, at the close of my seventy-third year, in what may be called excellent health.  So that intellectual labour is not, necessarily, unfavourable to longevity.  But perhaps I ought here to add, that mine has been generally carried on out of doors.