The trees were a little separated from each other, and at the foot of one of them, a beautiful poplar, was a hillock of moss, such as the poet of Grasmere has described in the motto to our chapter.

The last half century of Wordsworth's life, in which he retired to his beloved lake district and lived successively at Grasmere and Rydal Mount, remind one strongly of Browning's long struggle for literary recognition.

He died tranquilly in 1850, at the age of eighty years, and was buried in the churchyard at Grasmere.

The Home at Grasmere, which is the first book of The Recluse, was not published till 1888, long after the poet's death.

In 1797, after a trip to Germany, he and Dorothy settled at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, in the Lake Country.

He died in 1850 and was buried in Grasmere Churchyard.

[Illustration: GRASMERE LAKE.

In 1808 he took the cottage at Grasmere that Wordsworth had quitted, and enjoyed the society of the three Lake poets.

Lady Maulevrier had given him a good deal of her confidence during those thirty years in which he had practised as his father's partner and successor at Grasmere.

He had married within the time, choosing for himself the buxom daughter of a lodgekeeper, whose wife had long been laid at rest in Grasmere churchyard.

He was looked up to and made much of in the village whenever he condescended to appear there; and by the rareness of his visits to the Inn or the Reading-room, and his unwillingness to accept hospitality from the tradesmen of Grasmere and Ambleside, he maintained his dignity and exaggerated his importance.

He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.

Does he live in Grasmere?' Steadman looked puzzled.

'You seem to know every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old babies,' said Hammond, Mary having just stopped to converse with an infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders.

'I fancy the Grasmere idea of reverend and amiable age must be strictly local.

There were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger carnations or picotees, asters or arums.

And there isn't anybody in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.

'But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty years?'

He went on to describe the old man in the grey coat, as minutely as he could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular-looking old person; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any one in Grasmere.

In this wise John Hammond saw all that was to be seen within a day's journey of Grasmere, except the top of Helvellyn.

'And you will see Windermere winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'

It would take them back to Grasmere sooner than they could get there on foot, in Mary's exhausted condition.

This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune.

"Fly, some kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale" The Blind Highland Boy October, 1803 "There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear" October, 1803 "England!

If you want to know how a poet should live, read Dorothy Wordsworth's journals at Grasmere; if you want to know how he should feel, read the letters of Keats.