"The house which I have for some time occupied," he
writes to Lord Lonsdale, in January 1813, "is the Parsonage of
Grasmere. It stands close by the churchyard, and I have found it
absolutely necessary that we should quit a place which, by recalling
to our minds at every moment the losses we have sustained in the
course of the last year, would grievously retard our progress
towards that tranquillity which it is our duty to aim at." It
happened that Rydal Mount became vacant at this moment, and in the
spring of 1813 the Wordsworths migrated to this their favourite and
last abode.
Rydal Mount has probably been oftener described than any other
English poet's home since Shakespeare; and few homes, certainly,
have been moulded into such close accordance with their inmates'
nature. The house, which has been altered since Wordsworth's day,
stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar, above Rydal
Lake. The garden was described by Bishop Wordsworth immediately
after his uncle's death, while every terrace-walk and flowering
alley spoke of the poet's loving care. He tells of the "tall ash-tree,
in which a thrush has sung, for hours together, during many years;"
of the "laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung;" of
the stone steps "in the interstices of which grow the yellow
flowering poppy, and the wild geranium or Poor Robin,"--
Gay
With his red stalks upon a sunny day.
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