CLEAR WATERS 



respective seasons blaze beneath the trunks of great 

 forest trees. Here, drifting along from bay to bay as 

 near as may be to the line where the visible bottom 

 shelves into deeper water, the angler in the month 

 of May, as I have said, taking things more seriously, 

 will shape his course with fair prospects of success. 

 How delightful all this is, too, when summer is just 

 dawning with its sweet odours and balmy zephyrs, 

 breathing in gentle ripples along the surface of the 

 lake, while the cuckoo calls from the shore. 



I do not think — not forgetting its recognised rival, 

 the prospect from Derwentwater looking up to Borrow- 

 dale — that there is anything in Lakeland quite equal 

 to the head of Ullswater as viewed, let us say, from 

 off Glencoin : the fringing foliage, the far-climbing 

 bracken steeps, the rock-breasted summit of Place Fell 

 filling the sky upon the one side, and upon the other 

 those gracious intervals of wood and meadowland 

 behind which upsprings the great Helvellyn group. 

 The consummation of the picture, however, is the mass 

 of piled-up mountains beyond the head of the lake 

 which fills in its background — that fine procession of 

 peaks and broken summits which sweeps round from 

 Fairfield to the High Street over whose lowest gap you 

 can mark the white trail of the road that climbs the 

 famous Kirkstone pass. How absolutely peaceful, and 

 only yesterday, alas ! how conscious of its real seclusion 

 from a noisy world used this queen of English lakes 

 to seem in those May and June days : the call of the 

 cuckoo, the faint click of a horse upon the shore road, 

 the clamour of many sheep gathered from the hills 

 for some dipping or shearing ceremony, the chorus 



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