Awe vs. Pragmatism, Daffodils vs. Death

This is what our lives can be like sometimes--wandering around experiencing awe. It's kind of ideal.

This is also what our lives can be like sometimes. We have to deal with pragmatic stuff.

Studying literature at BYU helps keep us in awe-land.

Plus, literature is important! It leads to ideas and power and change and empathy.

But all of that pragmatic stuff, what does it lead to?

 

Let's take Wordsworth for a case study. His early poetry was solidly in awe-land with little reference to the pragmatics of the world around him.

But this stuff was also going on in Wordsworth's world.

In Wordsworth's later work, we find a lot more references to what was going on around him--reactions to the deaths of his friends, for example. And not in the transcendental, trailing clouds of glory way, but in a more pragmatic way.

What does Wordsworth's transition from daffodils to death say about awe vs. pragmatism?

Could his transition from daffodils to death teach us something about our transition, say, from the university to "the real world"? Or from awe to pragmatism, and how the two relate?

If we follow Wordsworth's trajectory, we end on death, not daffodils…..

So does that mean that pragmatics and death are the real ending here? How  do the sides of the binary interact, with awe/literature/daffodils on one side, and pragmatism/war/death on the other side? Do we have to find awe in the pragmatics for this to work out? Is it a false binary?