There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander! many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent
That they might answer him.—And they would
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse
Of jocund din!
And, when there came a
Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he
Listening, a gentle shock of mild
Has carried far into his heart the
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible
Would enter unawares into his
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven
Into the bosom of the steady lake.
This boy was taken from his mates, and
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
Pre-eminent in beauty is the
Where he was born and bred: the churchyard
Upon a slope above the village-school;
And through that churchyard when my way has
On summer-evenings,
I believe that thereA long half-hour together I have
Mute —looking at the grave in which he lies!1.
Later incorporated in The Prelude,
V, 364-97.
Composed in Germany in November, 1798.
In the earliest manuscript (Nov. 1798), the poem or reminiscence ends with line 25; there is no reference to death, and the remembered boy who mimicked the owls was the poet himself.2.
Winander:
Windermere, the largest of the English lakes, in Westmorland and Lancashire.28.
The vale of Esthwaite with its village of Hawkshead, the school which Wordsworth attended, and the nearby churchyard as here described.
The schoolmate whose grave was in the churchyard was probably John Vickers who died in 1782, when Wordsworth was twelve.
