Of earth--and with what motion moved the clouds!

The innocent rapine of _nutting_ taught him to feel that there is a
spirit in the woods--a presence which too rude a touch of ours will
desecrate and destroy.

The neighbouring lakes of Coniston, Esthwaite, Windermere, have left
similar traces of the gradual upbuilding of his spirit. It was on a
promontory on Coniston that the sun's last rays, gilding the eastern
hills above which he had first appeared, suggested the boy's first
impulse of spontaneous poetry, in the resolve that, wherever life
should lead him, his last thoughts should fall on the scenes where
his childhood was passing now. It was on Esthwaite that the
"huge peak" of Wetherlam, following him (as it seemed) as he rowed
across the starlit water, suggested the dim conception of "unknown
modes of being," and a life that is not ours. It was round Esthwaite
that the boy used to wander with a friend at early dawn, rejoicing
in the charm of words in tuneful order, and repeating together their
favourite verses, till "sounds of exultation echoed through the
groves." It was on Esthwaite that the band of skaters "hissed along
the polished ice in games confederate," from which Wordsworth would
sometimes withdraw himself and pause suddenly in full career, to
feel in that dizzy silence the mystery of a rolling world.

A passage, less frequently quoted, in describing a boating excursion
on Windermere illustrates the effect of some small point of human
interest in concentrating and realising the diffused emotion which
radiates from a scene of beauty:

But, ere nightfall,