I like it. The use of the Solomon Grundy structure, that thumping finality, signals the irony pretty clearly for me. I'm surprised nobody's picked up on the nursery rhyme. I didn't necessarily read it as against metropolitanism, more just the idea that one can stay in one place (wherever that might be) and have the most extraordinary inner life. I think of Blake, too, who barely ever left Lambeth.
Mark
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