One have I marked, the happiest guest

In all this covert of the blest :

Hail to Thee, far above the rest

In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:

A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy gladness without care

Too blest with any one to pair;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstacies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

My dazzled sight he oft deceives,
A Brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;

As if by that exulting strain

He mocked and treated with disdain

The voiceless Form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes.1

This, of all Wordsworth's Poems, is the one most distinctively associated with the Orchard, at Town-end, Grasmere.-ED.

[Written at Grasmere. These Yew-trees are still standing, but the spread of that at Lorton is much diminished by mutilation. I will here mention that a little way up the hill, on the road leading from Rosthwaite to Stonethwaite (in Borrowdale) lay the trunk of a Yew-tree, which appeared as you approached, so vast was its diameter, like the entrance of a cave, and not a small one. Calculating upon what I have observed of the slow growth of this tree in rocky situations, and of its durability, I have often thought that the one I am describing must have been as old as the Christian era. The Tree lay in the line of a fence. Great masses of its ruins were strewn about, and some had been

rolled down the hillside and lay near the road at the bottom. As you approached the tree, you were struck with the number of shrubs and young plants, ashes, &c., which had found a bed upon the decayed trunk and grew to no inconsiderable height, forming, as it were, a part of the hedgerow. In no part of England, or of Europe, have I ever seen a yew-tree at all approaching this in magnitude, as it must have stood. By the bye, Hutton, the old guide, of Keswick, had been so impressed with the remains of this tree, that he used gravely to tell strangers that there could be no doubt of its having been in existence before the flood.]

THERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore;
Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine

Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane ;-a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially-beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purposes, decked
With unrejoicing berries-ghostly Shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,

Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow;-there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.

The text of this poem was never altered.

The Yew-tree-which, in 1803, was "of vast circumference," the "pride of Lorton Vale," and is described as—

a living thing

Produced too slowly ever to decay;

Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed-

does not now verify this sanguine prediction of its future. Mr Wilson Robinson of Whinfell Hall, Cockermouth, wrote to me of it in May 1880-"The tree in outline expanded towards the root considerably : then, at about two feet from the ground, the trunk began to separate into huge limbs, spreading in all directions. I once measured this trunk at its least circumference, and found it 23 feet 10 inches. For the last 50 or 60 years the branches have been gradually dying on the S.E. side, and about 25 years ago a strong S.E. gale, coming with accumulated force down Hope Gill, and—owing to the tree being so open on that side -taking it laterally at a disadvantage, wrenched off one of the great side branches down to the ground, carrying away nearly a third of the tree. This event led to farther peril; for, the second portion having been sold to a cabinetmaker at Whitehaven for £15, this gave the impression that the wood was very valuable (owing to the celebrity of the tree); and a local woodmonger bought the remainder. Two men worked half a day to grub it up; but a Cockermouth medical gentleman, hearing what was going on, made representations to the owner, and it ended in the woodmen sparing the remainder of the tree, which was not much the worse for what had been done. Many large dead branches have also been cut off, and now we have to regret that the 'pride of Lorton Vale,' shorn of its ancient dignity, is but a ruin, much more venerable than picturesque."

The "fraternal Four of Borrowdale" are certainly "worthier still of note." The "trunk" described in the Fenwick note, as on the road between Rosthwaite and Stonethwaite, has disappeared long ago; but the "solemn and capacious grove" still exists in its integrity. The description in the poem is realistic throughout, while the visible scene suggests "an ideal grove, in which the ghostly masters of mankind

meet, and sleep, and offer worship to the Destiny that abides above them, while the mountain flood, as if from another world, makes music to which they daily listen." (Mr Stopford Brooke.) With the first part of the poem Yew-trees may be compared the Sonnet composed at Neidpath Castle on the Tweed in the Scotch Tour, 1803. For a critical estimate of this poem see Modern Painters, part III., sec. II., chap. IV. Mr Ruskin alludes to "the real and high action of the imagination in Wordsworth's Yew-trees (perhaps the most vigorous and solemn bit of forest landscape ever painted). It is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch of colour, by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged," Modern Painters, Vol. II., p. 193. See also Coleridge's Criticism in the Biographia Literaria, Vol. II., p. 177, and his daughter (Sara Coleridge's) comment on her father's note.-ED.

1

WHO FANCIED WHAT A PRETTY SIGHT.

1836.

WHO fancied what a pretty sight

This rock would be if edged around
With living snow-drops? circlet bright!
How glorious to this orchard-ground!
Who loved the little Rock, and set
Upon its head this coronet?

Was it the humour of a child?

Or rather of some gentle maid,1

Whose brows, the day that she was styled
The shepherd-queen, were thus arrayed?

Of man mature, or matron sage?
Or old man toying with his age?

I asked 'twas whispered; The device
To each and all might well belong :

Or rather of some love sick maid.

1807.