January 20th, 1798 by Dorothy Wordsworth

The green paths down the hillside are channels for streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of water running between the ridges, the sheep are gathered together on the slopes.

After the wet dark days, the country seems more populous. It peoples itself in the sunbeams.

The garden, mimic of spring, is gay with flowers. The purple-starred hepatica spreads itself in the sun, and the clustering snow-drops put forth their white heads, at first upright, ribbed with green, and like a rose bud when completely opened, hanging their heads downwards, but slowly lengthening their slender stems.

The slanting woods of an unvarying brown, showing the light through the thin net-work of their upper boughs.

Upon the highest ridge of that round hill covered with planted oaks, the shafts of the trees show in the light like the columns of a ruin.

from the Alfoxden Journal (Note: all paragraph breaks are mine.)



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