English poem
“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 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.
1803
More by William Wordsworth
- “Proud Were Ye, Mountains, When, In Times Of Old”
- “Said Red-Ribboned Evans”
- “Said Secrecy To Cowardice And Fraud”
- “See The Condemned Alone Within His Cell”
- “Six Months To Six Years Added He Remained”
- “So Fair, So Sweet, Withal So Sensitive”
- “Sweet Was The Walk Along The Narrow Lane”
- “Tenderly Do We Feel By Nature’S Law”