No More Learning

. . . seems . . . 1807. ]





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AN EVENING WALK

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY


Composed 1787-9. [A]--Published 1793


[The young Lady to whom this was addressed was my Sister. It was
composed at School, and during my first two College vacations. There
is not an image in it which I have not observed; and, now in my
seventy-third year, I recollect the time and place, when most of them
were noticed. I will confine myself to one instance:

Waving his hat, the shepherd, from the vale,
Directs his winding dog the cliffs to scale,--
The dog, loud barking, 'mid the glittering rocks,
Hunts, where his master points, the intercepted flocks.

I was an eye-witness of this for the first time while crossing the
Pass of Dunmail Raise. Upon second thought, I will mention another
image:

And, fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines
Its darkening boughs and leaves, in stronger lines.

This is feebly and imperfectly expressed, but I recollect distinctly
the very spot where this first struck me.
It was on the way between
Hawkshead and Ambleside, and gave me extreme pleasure. The moment was
important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness
of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been
unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as I was
acquainted with them; and I made a resolution to supply in some degree
the deficiency. I could not have been at that time above fourteen
years of age. The description of the swans, that follows, was taken
from the daily opportunities I had of observing their habits, not as
confined to the gentleman's park, but in a state of nature. There were
two pairs of them that divided the lake of Esthwaite, and its
in-and-out flowing streams, between them, never trespassing a single
yard upon each other's separate domain. They were of the old
magnificent species, bearing in beauty and majesty about the same
relation to the Thames swan which that does to the goose. It was from
the remembrance of those noble creatures, I took, thirty years after,
the picture of the swan which I have discarded from the poem of
'Dion'. [B] While I was a schoolboy, the late Mr. Curwen introduced a
little fleet of these birds, but of the inferior species, to the lake
of Windermere. Their principal home was about his own island; but they
sailed about into remote parts of the lake, and either from real or
imagined injury done to the adjoining fields, they were got rid of at
the request of the farmers and proprietors, but to the great regret of
all who had become attached to them from noticing their beauty and
quiet habits. I will conclude my notice of this poem by observing that
the plan of it has not been confined to a particular walk, or an
individual place; a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of
my unwillingness to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact and
real circumstance. The country is idealised rather than described in
any one of its local aspects. --I. F. ]

The title of this poem, as first published in 1793, was 'An Evening
Walk. An epistle; in verse.