In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure

As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,

Must perish;-how can they this blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change bemoan

Who scorns a false utilitarian lure

'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?

Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orrest-head †
Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance :
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance

Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,

Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong
And constant voice, protest against the wrong.

October 12th, 1844. ̧

* The degree and kind of attachment which many of the yeomanry feel to their small inheritances can scarcely be over-rated. Near the house of one of them stands a magnificent tree, which a neighbour of the owner advised him to fell for profit's sake. "Fell it!" exclaimed the yeoman, "I had rather fall on my knees and worship it." It happens, I believe, that the intended railway would pass through this little property, and I hope that an apology for the answer will not be thought necessary by one who enters into the strength of the feeling.-W. W., 1845.

Compare the two letters on the Kendal and Windermere Railway, contributed by Wordsworth to The Morning Post, and republished in this volume. -ED.

+ Orresthead is the height close to Windermere, to the north of the town.-ED.

PROUD were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old,
Your patriot sons, to stem invasive war,

Intrenched your brows; ye gloried in each scar:
Now, for your shame, a Power, the Thirst of Gold,
That rules o'er Britain like a baneful star,
Wills that your peace, your beauty, shall be sold,
And clear way made for her triumphal car
Through the beloved retreats your arms enfold!
Heard YE that Whistle? As her long-linked Train
Swept onwards, did the vision cross your view?
Yes, ye were startled; and, in balance true,
Weighing the mischief with the promised gain,
Mountains, and Vales, and Floods, I call on you
To share the passion of a just disdain.

The following sonnet by Mr Rawnsley-suggested by a recent attempt to introduce a mineral railway into Borrowdale-may be read in connection with Wordsworth's sonnets.-ED.

A CRY FROM DERWENTWATER.

Shall then the stream of ruinous Lodore

Not fill the valley with its changeful sound
Unchallenged! shall grey Derwent's sacred bound
Hear the harsh brawl and intermittent roar

Of mocking waves upon an iron shore,

Whereby nor health nor happiness is found!-
While steam-wains drag from Honister's heart wound
The long cooled ashes of its fiery core !

Burst forth ye sulphurous fountains, as ye broke
On Skiddaw, lick the waters, blast the trees,
And let men have the earth they would desire,-
As well go pass our children through the fire
With shrieks, Cath-Belus, round thine altar's smoke,
As let old Derwent hear such sounds as these.

WRAY VICARAGE, AMBLESIDE.

H. D. RAWNSLEY.

HERE, where, of havoc tired and rash undoing,
Man left this Structure to become Time's prey,
A soothing Spirit follows in the way

That Nature takes, her counter-work pursuing.
See how her Ivy clasps the sacred Ruin,*
Fall to prevent or beautify decay;

And, on the mouldered walls, how bright, how gay,
The flowers in pearly dews their bloom renewing!
Thanks to the place, blessings upon the hour:
Even as I speak the rising Sun's first smile
Gleams on the grass-crowned top of yon tall Tower *
Whose cawing occupants with joy proclaim
Prescriptive title to the shattered pile

Where, Cavendish,† thine seems nothing but a name!

In the chancel of the church at Furness Abbey, ivy almost covers the north wall. In the Belfry and in the Chapter House, it is the same. The "tower," referred to in the sonnet, is evidently the belfry tower to the west. It is still " grass-crowned." The sonnet was doubtless composed on the spot, and if Wordsworth ascended to the top of the belfry tower, he might have seen the morning sunlight strike the small remaining fragment of the central tower. But it is more likely that he looked up from the nave, or choir, of the church to the belfry, when he spoke of the sun's first smile gleaming from the top of the tall tower. "Flowers" --crowfoot, campanulas, &c. -still luxuriate on the mouldered walls. With the line,

compare,

"Fall to prevent or beautify decay,"

"Nature softening and concealing,
And busy with a hand of healing,"

in the description of Bolton Abbey in The White Doe of Rylstone.—ED. + Furness Abbey is the property of the Duke of Devonshire, whose family name is Cavendish.-ED.

1845.

The Poems of 1845 include one "on the Naming of Places," The Westmoreland Girl (addressed to the Poet's grandchildren), several fragments addressed to Mrs Wordsworth and to friends, The Cuckoo Clock and one or two Sonnets.

+

FORTH from a jutting ridge, around whose base
Winds our deep Vale, two heath-clad Rocks ascend*
In fellowship, the loftiest of the pair

Rising to no ambitious height; yet both,

O'er lake and stream, mountain and flowery mead,
Unfolding prospects fair as human eyes

Ever beheld.

Up-led with mutual help,

To one or other brow of those twin Peaks

Were two adventurous Sisters wont to climb,

And took no note of the hour while thence they gazed,

The blooming heath their couch, gazed, side by side,
In speechless admiration.

I, a witness

These two rocks rise to the left of the lower high-road from Grasmere to Rydal, after it leaves the former lake and turns eastwards towards the latter. They are still "heath" clad, and covered with the coppice of the old Bane Riggs Wood, so named because the shortest road from Ambleside to Grasmere used to pass through it; "bain" or "bane" signifying, in the Westmoreland dialect, a short cut. Dr Cradock wrote of them thus :"They are now difficult of approach, being enclosed in a wood, with dense undergrowth, and surrounded by a high, well-built wall. They can be well seen from the lower road, from a spot close to the three-mile stone from Ambleside. They are some fifty or sixty feet above the road, about twenty yards apart, and separated by a slight depression of, say, ten feet. The view from the easterly one is now much preferable, as it is less encumbered with shrubs; and for that reason also is more heath-clad. The twin rocks are also well seen, though at a farther distance, from the hill in White Moss Commoǹ between the roads, which Dr Arnold used to call 'Old Corruption,' and 'Bit-by-bit Reform.' Doubtless the rocks were far more easily approached fifty years ago, when walls, if any, were low and ill-built. It is probable, however, that even then they were enclosed and protected; for heath will not grow on the Grasmere hills. on places much frequented by sheep." The best view of these heath-clad rocks from the lower carriage road is at a spot two or three yards to the west of a large rock on the roadside near the milestone. The view of them from the Loughrigg Terrace walks is also interesting. The two sisters were Mary and Sarah Hutchinson (Mrs Wordsworth and her sister).-Ed.

And frequent sharer of their calm delight
With thankful heart, to either Eminence
Gave the baptismal name each Sister bore.
Now are they parted, far as Death's cold hand
Hath power to part the Spirits of those who love
As they did love. Ye kindred Pinnacles-
That, while the generations of mankind
Follow each other to their hiding-place
In time's abyss, are privileged to endure
Beautiful in yourselves, and richly graced
With like command of beauty-grant your aid
For MARY'S humble, SARAH's silent, claim,
That their pure joy in nature may survive
From age to age in blended memory.

* This Westmoreland Girl was Sarah Mackereth of Wyke Cottage, Grasmere. She married a man named Davis, and died in 1872 at Broughton in Furness. The swollen "flood" from which she rescued the lamb, was Wyke Gill beck, which descends from the centre of Silver Howe. The picturesque cottage, with round chimney,-a yew tree and Scotch fir behind it,-is on the western side of the road from Grasmere over to Langdale by Red Bank. The Mackereths have been a well-known West