You must know how I happened to be riding through these wild regions.

It was my wish that Dora should have the benefit of her pony while at Cambridge, and very valiantly and economically I determined, unused as I am to horsemanship, to ride the creature myself.

I sent James with it to Lancaster; there mounted; stopped a day at Manchester, a week at Coleorton, and so reached the end of my journey safe and sound, not, however, without encountering two days of tempestuous rain.
Thirty-seven miles did I ride in one day through the worse of these storms.

And what was my resource?
guess again: writing verses to the memory of my departed friend Sir George Beaumont, whose house I had left the day before.

While buffetting the other storm I composed a Sonnet upon the splendid domain at Chatsworth, which I had seen in the morning, as contrasted with the secluded habitations of the narrow dells in the Park; and as I passed through the tame and manufacture-disfigured country of Lancashire I was reminded by the faded leaves, of Spring, and threw off a few stanzas of an ode to May.
But too much of self and my own performances upon my steed--a descendant no doubt of Pegasus, though his owner and present rider knew nothing of it.