Grave Poetry

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So, yes, I definitely wasn’t in a good state to be hiking Helvellyn, so I stayed behind with two others who were feeling under the weather. We poked around Keswick’s market square a little bit in the morning. There was an open-air market for local crafts going on that hadn’t been there yesterday, so we got to poke around there a bit. I was sorely tempted by the pashminas (Indian scarfs—really adorable!), but Sarah (our TA) tells me they’ll be cheaper in London, so I managed to restrain myself.

At mid-day we took a bus to our next youth hostel in Grasmere—Wordsworth’s home town. The bus wove crazily back and forth across the tiny roads and crunched over next to the hedges and rock walls whenever another car needed to pass. By the time we got to Grasmere, I was feeling a little sick, so I took a nap in the Thorney How Youth Hostel lobby. (Most hostel offices don’t open until 5 pm, so we weren’t checked into our rooms yet.) When I woke up, I wandered around to the back of the hostel and found the most amazing tree to do some writing under. It’s a good thing this place has a good backyard because it has a serious downside—only one shower for 20 girls for three days . . .

In the evening, everyone got back from hiking (from the looks of it, it was a good thing I didn’t go), and we went over to the local church to see William and Dorothy Wordsworth’s graves. We read a couple of his poems, including “Ode on Intimations of Immortality,” and talked about the difference between when we first experience things and when we become familiar with things.

Then we got to explore to graveyard. It was interesting to see how much the whole town revolved around the Wordsworths. There were several graves noting that the person was a servant or a friend to them. The graveyard inself was really interesting. The ground was all uneven—you could see the mounds of earth on each grave. It was easy to imagine how graveyards became so creepy when you literally felt you were walking over bodies. *shudder*

Well, it was a relatively uneventful day, but the rest has made me feel a lot better, which is good because the next two days are busy ones!

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Comments

[Katherine]

grasmere..
Oh, Liz... I wish I were in England. I love Grasmere. I hope you ate gingerbread. (Yeah, the pashminas will definitely be cheaper in London.)