Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The first eight stanzas were 
      composed extempore one winter evening in the cottage; when, after 
      having tired myself with labouring at an awkward passage in "The 
      Brothers," I started with a sudden impulse to this to get rid of 
      the other, and finished it in a day or two. My Sister and I had 
      past the place a few weeks before in our wild winter journey from 
      Sockburn on the banks of the Tees to Grasmere. A peasant whom we 
      met near the spot told us the story so far as concerned the name 
      of the Well, and the Hart, and pointed out the Stones. Both the 
      Stones and the Well are objects that may easily be missed; the 
      tradition by this time may be extinct in the neighbourhood: the 
      man who related it to us was very old.
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        Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from 
      Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads 
      from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable 
      Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of 
      in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now 
      exist as I have there described them.