with Coleridge the walking tour through the
lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland, which issued in his choice of a
home at Grasmere for himself and his sister.

At the close of the year Wordsworth and his sister set off and walked,
driven forward by the cold, frosty winds blowing from behind, from
Wensleydale over Sedbergh's naked heights and the high range that divides
the Yorkshire dales from the lake country. On the shortest day of the
year (St. Thomas's Day) they reached the small two-story cottage at the
Townend of Grasmere, which, for the next eight years, was to be the
poet's home, immortalised by the work he did in it. That cottage has
behind it a small orchard-plot or garden ground shelving upwards toward
the woody mountains above, and in front it looks across the peaceful lake
with its one green island, to the steeps of Silver-how on the farther
side. Westward it looks on Helm Craig, and up the long folds of Easedale
towards the range that divides Easedale from Borrowdale. In this cottage
they two lived on their income of a hundred pounds a year, Dorothy doing
all the household work, for they had then, it has been said, no servant.
Besides this, she had time to write out all his poems--for Wordsworth
himself could never bear the strain of transcribing--to read aloud to him
of an afternoon or evening--at one such reading by her of Milton's
Sonnets it was that his soul took fire and rolled off his first
sonnets--and to accompany him on his endless walks. Nor these alone--her
eye and imagination fed him, not only with subjects for his poetry, but
even with images and thoughts. What we are told of the poem of the
'Beggars' might be said of I know not how many more. 'The sister's eye
was ever on the watch to provide for the poet's pen.' He had a most
observant eye, and she also for him; and his poems are sometimes little
more than poetic versions of her descriptions of the objects which she
had seen; and which he treated as seen by himself. Look at the poem on
the 'Daffodils' and compare with it these words taken from the sister's
Journal. 'When we were in the woods below Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few
daffodils close by the water-side. As we went along there were more and
yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw there were a
long belt of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful.
They grew among the mossy stones about them. Some rested their heads on
the stones, as on a