Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits, Amid the undistinguishable crowd Of cities, ’mid the same eternal flow Of the same objects, melted and reduced To one identity, by differences That have no law, no meaning, and no end, Shall he feel yearning to those lifeless forms, And shall we think that Nature is less kind To those, who all day long, through a long life, Have walked within her sight? It cannot be. Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Wordsworth. Sat. Eve., 20 past 6, May 29. Other fragments follow, less worthy of preservation. Then the passage, which occurs in book xiii. of _The Prelude_, beginning-- There are who think that strong affection, love, (see vol. iii. p. 361), with one or two variations from the final text, which were not improvements. Five lines on Helvellyn, afterwards included in the _Musings near Aquapendente_ (see vol. viii. p. 47, ll. 61-65), come next. The fragments referring to _Michael_ are written down, probably just as the brother dictated them to his sister, and would be--if not unintelligible--certainly without any literary connection or unity, were they printed in the order in which they occur. I therefore transpose them slightly, to give something like continuity to the whole; which remains, of course, a torso. I will relate a tale for those who love To lie beside the lonely mountain brooks, And hear the voices of the winds and flowers. … … It befell At the first falling of the autumnal snows, Old Michael and his son one day went forth In search of a stray sheep. It was the time When from the heights our shepherds drive their flocks To gather all their mountain family Into the homestalls, ere they send them back There to defend themselves the winter long. Old Michael for this purpose had driven down His flock into the vale, but as it chanced, A single sheep was wanting. They had sought The straggler during all the previous day All over their own pastures, and beyond. And now at sunrise, sallying forth again Far did they go that morning: with their search Beginning towards the south, where from Dove Crag (Ill home for bird so gentle), they looked down On Deep-dale-head, and Brothers water (named From those two Brothers that were drowned therein); Thence northward did they pass by Arthur’s seat,[346] And Fairfield’s highest summit, on the right Leaving St. Sunday’s Crag, to Grisdale tarn They shot, and over that cloud-loving hill, Seat-Sandal, a fond lover of the clouds; Thence up Helvellyn, a superior mount, With prospect underneath of Striding edge, And Grisdale’s houseless vale, along the brink Of Sheep-cot-cove, and those two other coves, Huge skeletons of crags which from the coast Of old Helvellyn spread their arms abroad