Guide to the Lakes prose-poem about light, shapes, and textures, about movement and stillness ... It is a paean to a way of life, but also a lament for the inevitability of its passing ... What holds this diversity together is the voice of complete authority, compounded from experience, intense observation, thought, and love. Wordsworth was born in the Lake District and spent much of his life living there. Wordsworth and his friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge became known as Lake Poets not only because they lived in this area but also because its landscapes and people inspired their work. By 1810,
Lake Poets aesthetic". The "Guide" ran to five editions during Wordsworth's lifetime and proved to be very popular. Indeed, it has been said that "the architectural axioms of building and gardening in the Lake District for the next hundred years were established by the "Guide"". For other writers, the region's pull was more uncertain. Coleridge followed Wordsworth to the Lakes and moved into Greta Hall in 1800. Although identified by his contemporaries as a 'Lake Poet', Coleridge's response to the landscape was at variance with the vision of Wordsworth, leading Coleridge to identify the landscape's "Gothic elements"..."and in so doing seems to