Volume 8 — 1804
Reading edition
“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.