Fresh Fields

more the character of a message, and a message special and personal, to a comparatively small circle of readers. He stands for a particular phase of human thought and

oet, but more especially the poet of those who love solitude and solitary communion with nature. Shakespeare's attitude toward nature is for the most

untain, or b

achéd margen

tic achievements, but his poems can never mini

gion. I paused there a few days in early June, on my way south, and again on my return late in July. I walked up from Windermere to Grasmere, where, on the s

passed along. I plucked my first foxglove by the roadside; pa

ow their trumpets

as sombre; there were but two colors, green and brown, verging on black; wherever the rock cropped out of the green turf on the mountain-sides, or in the vale, it showed

ed well with one's conception of the loftier strains of its poet. It is not too much dominated by the mountains, though shut in on all sides by them; that

s above the tops of the trees and the roofs of the village. The water-ouzel loved to linger there, too, and would sit in contemplative mood on the stones around which the water loitered and murmured, its clear white breast alone defining it from the object upon which it rested. Then it would trip along the margin of the pool, or flit a few feet over its surface, and suddenly, as if it had burst like a bubble, vanish before my eyes; there would be a little splash of the water beneath where I saw it, as if the drop of which it was composed had reunited with the surface there. Then, in a moment or two, it would emerge from the water and take up its stand as dry and unruffled as ever. It was always amusing to see this plump little bird, so unlike a water-fowl in shape and manner, disappear in the stream. It did not seem to dive, but simply dropped into the water, as if its wings had suddenly failed it. Sometimes it fair

ing water; and, when the ear cannot hear them, the eye can see the streaks or patches of white foam down the green declivities. There are no trees above the valley bottom

e Vale! The

speaks when s

unison of

er voice

sited Wordsworth's country, just as the words "cottage" and "shepherd"

of Nature, l

nest in a

or and

wife and fri

lightful d

to young

self lived had a cozy, nest-like look; and every vale is green,-a c

he loves the flocks, the heights, the tarn, the tender herbage, the sheltered dell, the fold, with a kind of poetized shepherd instinct. Lambs and sheep and their haunts, and those who tend them, recur perpetually in his poems. How well

rimal

ng been, mu

red in his own heart. In his poem of "The Broth

d been

ntains, and h

epherd on the

ing shrouds ha

aterfalls, and

es and

ide and gazing into the "broad g

saw the forms of

dant h

every experience or sentiment called

sly rolling up a great sheet of dark brown paper, uncovering beneath it one of the most fresh and vivid green. The mown grass is so long in curing in this country (frequently two weeks) that the new blades spring beneath it, and a second crop is well under way before the old is "carried." The long mountain slopes up which I was making my way were as verdant as the plain below me. Large coarse ferns or bracken, with an under-lining of fine grass, covered the ground on the lower portions. On the higher, grass alone prevailed. On the top of the divide, looking down into the valley of Ulleswater, I came upon one of those black tarns, or mountain lakelets, which are such a feature in this strange scenery. The word "tarn" has no meaning with us, though our young p

ol both flocks and

argin, even a

asin, which the

for their r

g up the steep flank of Helvellyn. Far up the green acclivity I met a man and two young women making their way slowly down. They had

ough a gate, and have a mile yet to the highest ground in front of you; but you could traverse it in a buggy, it is so smooth and grassy. The grass fails just before the s

rraqueous

o circumferen

ast western slope appeared one smooth, unbroken surface of grass. The following jottings in my notebook, on the spo

s waste of h

st, across Grisedale, is a steep acclivity covered with small, loose stones, as if they had been dumped over the top, and were slowly sliding down; but nowhere do I see great bowlders strewn about. Patches of black peat are here and there. The little rills, near and far, are white as milk, so swiftly do they run. On the more precipitous sides the grass and moss are lodged, and hold like snow, and are as tender in hue as the first April blades. A multitude of lakes are in view, and Morecambe Bay to the south. There are sheep everywhere, loosely scattered, with their lambs; occasionally I hear them bleat. No other sound is heard but the chirp of the mount

ghts, from parti

g the preci

ked waste of sc

one comes face t

e pristi

t in its

he leaping torrents, look out upon one near at hand and pass a mute recognition. Wordsworth perpetually refers to these hills and dales as lonely or lonesome; but his hea

oly,-no, for

fertile, furn

edful things th

s how soft it

erly pro

ot. The last of July the grass was still short and thick, as if it never shot up a stalk and produced seed, but always remained a fine, close mat. Nothing was more unlike what I was used to at home than this universal tendency (the same is true in Scotland and in Wales) to grass, and, on the lower slopes, to bracken, as if these were the only two plants in nature. Many of these eminences in the north of England, too lofty for hills and too smooth for mountains, are called