“You look round on your mother earth,/As if she for no purpose bore you;” Is a line that should speak to everyone. Whether you are lying on a stone as William has chosen to do, or telling someone why you are lying on that stone; know that books are always with us, much like the poor. Every book that is written, every voice that is heard, is just another thing taking us away from our dreams. Neither the expostulation nor the reply is wholly the correct understanding of the poem. The actual existence and preservation of the poem is proof that the ‘expostulation’ is an important pursuit; however, the dream is the genesis of that pursuit.