35
Near this unprofitable dust.

But who is He, with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown? [B]
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own. 40

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth, 45
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,--50
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

But he is weak; both Man and Boy,
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented if he might enjoy 55
The things which others understand.

--Come hither in thy hour of strength;
Come, weak as is a breaking wave!
Here stretch thy body at full length;
Or build thy house upon this grave. 60

See the Fenwick note to the poem, 'Written in Germany, on one of the
coldest Days of the Century' (p. 73).

"The 'Poet's Epitaph' is disfigured to my taste by the common satire
upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of
'pin-point', in the sixth stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and
your own."

(Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth, January 1801.)--Ed.

* * * * *

VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1:

1837.

... Statesman, ... 1800.]

[Variant 2:

1837.

Of public business ... 1800.]

[Variant 3:

1820.

... to some other place
The hardness of thy coward eye,
The falsehood of thy sallow face. 1800.]

[Variant 4:

1820.

Art thou a man of gallant pride, 1800.]

[Variant 5:

1837.

Thy pin-point of a soul away! 1800.

That abject thing, thy soul, away! 1815.]

[Variant 6:

1837.

... nor ... 1800.]

[Variant 7:

1800.

... self-sufficient ... 1802.

The edition of 1815 returns to the text of 1800.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: D. D., not M. D. The physician is referred to in the fifth
stanza.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: Compare Thomson's description of the Bard, in his 'Castle
of Indolence' (canto ii., stanza xxxiii.):

He came, the bard, a little D