[374] The Hutchinsons.--ED. [375] Coleridge.--ED. “SHALL HE WHO GIVES HIS DAYS TO LOW PURSUITS” The following lines occur in the experimental efforts made by Wordsworth to write an autobiographical poem. They occur in one of his sister’s Journals, entitled “May to December, 1802”; and were probably either dictated to her in that year, or were copied by her from some earlier fragment. They stand related to passages in _The Prelude_. (See vol. iii. p. 269.)--ED. 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 5 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 busy life, Have walked within her sight? It cannot be. 10 1803 “I FIND IT WRITTEN OF SIMONIDES” Published in _The Morning Post_, October 10, 1803 S.T.C. writing to Tom Poole, October 14, 1803, said that Wordsworth wrote to _The Morning Post_ “as W. L. D., and sometimes with no signature.” There is ample evidence that the following sonnet was written by Wordsworth. He had contributed five sonnets to _The Morning Post_ before the month of September 1803; and on the 10th of October in that year the following appeared.--ED. I find it written of Simonides, That, travelling in strange countries, once he found A corpse that lay expos’d upon the ground, For which, with palms, he caus’d due obsequies To be perform’d, and paid all holy fees. 5 Soon after this man’s ghost unto him came, And told him not to sail, as was his aim, On board a ship then ready for the seas. Simonides, admonish’d by the ghost, Remain’d behind: the ship the following day 10 Set sail, was wreck’d, and all on board were lost. Thus was the tenderest Poet that could be, Who sang in antient Greece his loving lay, Sav’d out of many by his piety. 1804 “NO WHIMSEY OF THE PURSE IS HERE” Writing to Sir George Beaumont, on Christmas Day, 1804, Wordsworth said: “We have lately built in our little rocky orchard a circular hut, lined with moss, like a wren’s nest, and coated on the outside with heath, that stands most charmingly, with several views from the different sides of it, of the Lake, the Valley, and the Church.… I will copy a dwarf inscription which I wrote for it” (_i.e._ the circular hut, in his Orchard-Garden) “the other day before the building was entirely finished, which indeed it is not yet.”[376]--ED. No whimsey of the purse is here, No pleasure-house forlorn; Use, comfort, do this roof endear; A tributary shed to cheer The little cottage that is near, To help it and adorn.