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, etc., 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.I. F.] One of the "Poems of the Imagination."-ED. THERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched 5 To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea Of vast circumference and gloom profound To be destroyed. But worthier still of note Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; ΤΟ 15 Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, The text of this poem was never altered. 20 25 30 The Lorton Yew tree-which, in 1803, was "of vast circumference," the "pride of Lorton Vale," and described as— a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; does not now verify its poet's prediction of the 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" existed till 1883 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 dimly listen."-(Stopford A. Brooke, in Theology in the English Poets, p. 259.) With the first part of the poem Wordsworth's Sonnet composed at Castle during the Scotch Tour of 1803 may be compared (p. 410). For a critical estimate of the poem see Modern Painters, part III. sec. II. chap. iv. 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." See also Coleridge's criticism in Biographia Literaria, vol. ii. p. 177, edition 1847, and his daughter Sara's comment on her father's note. There can be little doubt that, as Professor Dowden has suggested, the lines 23 to 28 were suggested to Wordsworth by Virgil's lines in the Sixth Book of the Æneid, 273-284— Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci In medio ramos annosaque bracchia pandit "The Four Yew Trees,' and the mysterious company which you have assembled there, 'Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow.' It is a sight not for every youthful poet to dream of; it is one of the last results he must have gone thinking for years for."-(Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, 1815.) In Crabb Robinson's Diary, a reference to the Yew-trees of Lorton and Borrowdale will be found under date Sept. 16 and 20, 1816." The pride of Lorton Vale" is now a ruin, and has lost all its ancient majesty: but, until the close of 1883, the "fraternal four" of Borrowdale were still to be seen "in grand assemblage." Every one who has felt the power of Wordsworth's poetry,—and especially those who had visited the Seathwaite valley, and read the Yew-Trees under the shade of that once 66 solemn and capacious grove" before 1884,-must have felt as if they had lost a personal friend, when they heard that the "grove" was gone. The great gale of December II, 1883, smote it fiercely, uprooting one of the trees, and blowing the others to ribbands. The following is Mr. Rawnsley's account of the disaster : "Last week the gale that ravaged England did the Lake country much harm. We could spare many of the larch plantations, and could hear (with a sigh) of the fall of the giant Scotch firs opposite the little Scafell Inn at Rosthwaite, and that Watendlath had lost its pines; but who could spare those ancient Yews, the great 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. "For beneath their pillared shade since Wordsworth wrote his poem, that Yew-tree grove has suggested to many a wanderer up Borrowdale, and visitant to the Natural Temple, 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 dimly listen.' "These Yew-trees, seemingly Produced too slowly ever to decay; have been ruthlessly overthrown. One has been uprooted bodily; all the leaders and branches of the others have been wrenched from the main trunk; and the three still standing are bare poles and broken wreckage. Until one visits the spot one can have no conception of the wholesale destruction that the hurricane has wrought; until he looks on the huge rosy-hearted branches he cannot guess the tremendous force with which the tornado had fallen upon that 'sable roof of boughs.' "For tornado or whirlwind it must needs have been. The Yews grew under the eastern flank of the hill called Base Brown. The gale raged from the westward. One could hardly believe it possible that the trees could have been touched by it; for the barrier hill on which they grew,—and under whose shelter they have seen centuries of storm,-goes straight upwards, betwixt them and the west. It was only realizable when, standing amid the wreckage, and looking across the valley, it was seen that a larch plantation had been entirely levelled, and evidently by a wind that was coming from the east, and directly toward the Yew-trees. On enquiring at Seathwaite Farm, one found that all the slates blown from the roof of that building on the west side, had been whirled up clean over the roof: and we can only surmise that the winds rushing from the west and north-west, and meeting the bastions of Glaramara and the Sty-head slopes, were whirled round in the cul-de-sac of the valley, and moved with churning motion back from east to west over the Seathwaite Farm, and so in straight line across the beck, and up the slope to the Yew-tree cluster. With what a wrenching, and with what violence, these trees were in a moment shattered, only those can guess who now witness the ruins of the pillared shade, upon the ' grassless floor of red-brown hue.'"-ED. "WHO FANCIED WHAT A PRETTY SIGHT" Composed 1803.-Published 1807 In the edition of 1807 this poem was No. VIII. of the series entitled "Moods of my own Mind." It was afterwards included among the "Poems of the Fancy," and in a MS. copy it was named "The Coronet of Snowdrops."-ED. WHO fancied what a pretty sight |