Sonnets at the English Lakes :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sonnets at the English Lakes

by Hardwicke D. Rawnsley ... Second Edition

Rawnsley, H. D. (1851-1920)

[dedication]

[section]

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XCI. HAWKSHEAD FROM FURNESS FELLS.

The Poet was thy nursling, here he drank
His first boy thoughts of Nature and her will:
How often, fresh from school, he clomb this hill,
And, stretched in sun upon the heathy bank,
Endowed with life the mountains, rank on rank;
Or, in the time of earliest daffodil,
Watched April storm the open valley fill,
And drive the snow to Bowfell's iron flank.
For him the walls that shut the Western sky,
From Walney Scar to Langdale's double horn,
Seemed but to nerve his music's growing wing:
The sun might dip beyond the hills, and die,
But, bright as day, was Fancy's deathless morn;
The Lark might hush, but still his heart would sing.

Wordsworth, when at School at Hawkshead, would doubtless often climb up on to the Furness Fells, above Esthwaite Lake, by Latterbarrow. The view of the Westmoreland hill ranges—North and West—from this vantage ground, is indescribably grand.