The neighbouring lakes of Coniston, Esthwaite, Windermere, have left
similar traces of the gradual upbuilding of his spirit. It was on a
promontory on Coniston that the sun's last rays, gilding the eastern
hills above which he had first appeared, suggested the boy's first
impulse of spontaneous poetry, in the resolve that, wherever life
should lead him, his last thoughts should fall on the scenes where
his childhood was passing now. It was on Esthwaite that the
"huge peak" of Wetherlam, following him (as it seemed) as he rowed
across the starlit water, suggested the dim conception of "unknown
modes of being," and a life that is not ours. It was round Esthwaite
that the boy used to wander with a friend at early dawn, rejoicing
in the charm of words in tuneful order, and repeating together their
favourite verses, till "sounds of exultation echoed through the
groves." It was on Esthwaite that the band of skaters "hissed along
the polished ice in games confederate," from which Wordsworth would
sometimes withdraw himself and pause suddenly in full career, to
feel in that dizzy silence the mystery of a rolling world.
A passage, less frequently quoted, in describing a boating excursion
on Windermere illustrates the effect of some small point of human
interest in concentrating and realising the diffused emotion which
radiates from a scene of beauty:
But, ere nightfall,
When in our pinnace we returned at leisure
Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach
Of some small island steered our course with one,
The minstrel of the troop, and left him there,
And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute
Alone upon the rock--oh, then the calm
And dead still water lay upon my mind
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
Never before so beautiful, sank down
Into my heart, and held me like a dream!
The passage which describes the schoolboy's call to the owls--the
lines of which Coleridge said that he should have exclaimed
"Wordsworth!" if he had met them running wild in the deserts of
Arabia,--paint a somewhat similar rush of feeling with a still
deeper charm.
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