'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 w