It stood, the genius of the sea-blown bank,
        And rocked to every passing wind that blew:
Far out at sea that house the pilot knew,
Its friendly light the fishermen would thank.
For entrance, served a solitary plank,
Loud with the feet that pattered to and fro:
Up to the wolds the rising sun looked through,
Down to the sea looked through the sun that sank.
The housewife there had little need to keep
Of rosemary and lavender sweet store,
Her chests were fragrant with the salt sea-air.
There would the weary quite forget his care,
All day could revel on the healthful shore,
Lulled by its tidal tune all night could sleep.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 211)

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Sweet “Sister Constance”, would your life were mine?
    So purely fed, so consecrate to Rule,
    Then would no peevish fret, no foolish pule
Creep in a sour winter to my prime.
But yours, your life is ever Autumn time,
    Season of fruitful good, and quiet cool,
Your eyes are ever with your heart at school,
Your ears are mellow with the Vesper chime.
    Oh! hands of “pure religion undefiled,”
    That comfort age, & tend the sickly child,
Oh! hearts not ever shadowed with a doubt,
And doors that keep peace in & jarring out,
    Well may the warriors in the noisy strife
    Win through your prayers, & thank the cloistered life.
                                                                                                Kilburn. 1875

(Unpublished poem to Constance Kennard, Hardwicke’s step-cousin, in RR/1/7, Catherine Rawnsley’s Commonplace Book, in the Rawnsley Archives)

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I knew that to-morrow, if the wind kept in the east, the ice on Derwentwater would be in prime condition, and having much work to do, I also knew that there would be no skating for me unless rising betimes I could go off by star and moonlight to the lake.  At five-thirty I was astir.  Great silver clouds built up the heights of nobler mountains in the south, but westward the moon shone in a cloudless sky.  Leaving the quiet house and passing through the sleeping hamlet and through the little town, which, but for light in three windows and in the pencil factory, was still asleep, I made my way to the ‘lands,’ and as the clock struck six—the only living thing in that strange landscape—I shod myself with steel and struck out from the land. (p. 201)

It was poorish skating, for though brooms had been busy on Saturday, the ice had been much cut by skates, and on beyond this broomland the snow of Thursday last lay in patches.  The skates rustled through the snow and rang upon the clear ice spaces, and the cold air from the east an hour before the dawn, made one’s face and ears tingle as one pressed against it.  As for the moon, she must have been discomforted to think that all her desire to build a golden pillar upon the shining surface of the mere was foiled by these continued snow patches, which broke up the building of her glory into sections of gold, and dimness of dusky silver. (pp. 202-3)

But on beyond the white snow patches lay what looked at first in the dim twilight like open water.  It was not till I was close above it that I found this open water a solid sheet of ebon ice without a wrinkle in it.  I do not know how it is, but the feeling of ‘The Ancient Mariner’ comes back upon us all when we are the first to burst into an untravelled world, whether it be a sea, a desert waste, or a sheet of ice, and one could not help a sense of thrill with moon and stars alone to be one’s companions.  I hissed across that wonderful ice-sheet, swerving and curving with a new sense of power and unaccustomed speed, with Jupiter bright in the mirror before me and the great moon pillar of gold across my way, till, out of breath and with the blood racing warm through my heart, I leaned upon my heels and let the wind carry me where it would. (pp. 203-4)….

But the beauty was not in heaven but upon the shining ebon floor of the lake.  Its dark blackness disappeared, and in a moment the vast ice-sheet became first green, then gold, and then of rosy hue.  Involuntarily I pulled up and gazed upon the wonder thus revealed, and as I gazed the wonder grew and grew.  The moon was still shining above Hindscarth, the sun had not yet appeared, but all her light had paled before the coming of the day, and all the mystery of the heavens was forgotten in the marvel of that polished floor of rose and gold ingrain.  It is good to skate at noon and eventide.  It is better far to skate when moon and starlight fade before the dawn. (p. 205)

(Chapters at the English Lakes, pp. 200-205)

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December 18th, 1892

He saw the light on Morecambe’s golden sands,
      The crooked Lune ran silver to the main,
    And he went seawards, but his soul was fain
By helm of thought to seek for other lands
And sound the deep of knowledge.  To his hands
    Earth gave primeval secrets, o’er the plain
    Flew bat-winged pterodactyls, once again
Through swamp and ooze the Saurian pushed in bands.

Revealer of the times of tooth and claw,
    He filled the world with dragons; bone by bone
      Guessed at the bird Dinornis great and grim,
      But as he listened to the blackbird’s hymn
    He heard a prophet voice, an angel tone
Sing of a higher life with Love for Law.

(Valete: Tennyson and other Memorial Poems, p. 119)

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