The rose-tree for her footsteps hearkening.
I see her! though in dust she sleeps;
I hear her! though no lyre she sweeps;
And for her sake so fondly dear
I love thee, sweet Winandermere.
Thursday, August 27, 1840.
A cottage in the neighborhood of Winandermere, called the "Dove's Nest," derives deep interest from having been the favored retreat of Mrs. Hemans, during a part of the summer of 1830. While on a visit to Wordsworth, she was struck with its retired beauty, and was delighted to find that she could engage rooms in it for herself and her boys, for the sojourn of a few weeks. From thence she wrote a friend:
"Henry is out with his fishing rod, Charles sketching, and Claude climbing the hill above the Dove's Nest. I cannot follow, for I have not strength yet. But in feeling, I think that I am more of a child than any of them. How shall I tell you of all the loveliness by which I am surrounded, of all the soothing, holy influences it seems to be shedding down into my inmost heart. I have sometimes feared within the last two years, that the effect of suffering and of adulation, of feelings too highly wrought and too severely tried, would have been to dry up within me the fountains of such pure and simple enjoyment. But now I know that
