[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,