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Among the poems written at Alfoxden Peter Bell was prominent, but we hear little of it except from Hazlitt, who, taken over to the Wordsworths by Coleridge from Nether Stowey, was on a first visit permitted to read "the sibylline leaves," and on a second had the rare pleasure of hearing Wordsworth himself chant Peter Bell, in his "equable, sustained, and internal" manner of recitation, under the ash-trees of Alfoxden Park.
It surely would seem right to his grandmother that he had done this. But where should he go now? The people had all gone home from the fields, perhaps were already asleep. Up in the ash-trees not one little bird made a single sound. They were surely all in their nests and fast asleep.
This was the signal for going to table. The food had been spread on the tablecloth under the shade of the ash-trees, and all the guests sat around on sacks of charcoal; for Reine and Julien alone they had reserved two stools, made by the master, and thus they found themselves seated side by side.
On the west this narrow defile was closed by a mill, standing like a sentinel on guard, in its uniform of solid gray; on each side of the river a verdant line of meadow led the eye gradually toward the clump of ancient and lofty ash-trees, behind which rose the Buxieres domicile.
Under the ash-trees, the clear brook was running with the cool mountain water and feeding the gaily nodding primroses and pink anemones on the hillside, as they grew and bloomed down close to the water. On the low wall by the brook, in the shadow of the ash-trees, an old woman was sitting. She was called "Old Mary Ann" throughout the whole neighborhood.
As the wind was off the shore it did not matter; if it had blown from the east, his canoe might very likely have been much damaged. The shore was overgrown with hazel to within twenty yards of the water, then the ground rose and was clothed with low ash-trees, whose boughs seemed much stunted by tempest, showing how exposed the spot was to the easterly gales of spring.
On the west this narrow defile was closed by a mill, standing like a sentinel on guard, in its uniform of solid gray; on each side of the river a verdant line of meadow led the eye gradually toward the clump of ancient and lofty ash-trees, behind which rose the. Buxieres domicile.
When the carriage, suddenly turning a corner, stopped in front of the gate of entrance, and he beheld, through the cast-iron railing, the long avenue of ash-trees, the grass-grown courtyard, the silent facade, his heart began to beat more rapidly, and his natural timidity again took possession of him. "The gate is closed, and they don't seem to be expecting you," remarked the driver.
But the poet's real study was out of doors; and it was there that we looked for the things that he loved. In a field beyond the house there were two splendid old ash-trees, which must have been full-grown in Wordsworth's day.
A great grass-grown park-wall, overtopped with mighty trees; but still on and on we came at a canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old grey park-wall flanking us at one side, and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ash-trees, irregularly on the other.
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