There Was A Boy

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.