“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.
[376] See the Memorials of Coleorton, vol. i. p. 81; and Wordsworth’s letter on the subject in a later volume of this edition.—Ed.