I thought of

I thought it was interesting that the two poets Wordsworth sites here are a teenager and a farmer, Chatterton and Burns. This would seem to be in keeping with his fascination with the young and their "wild eyes" as well as his interest in "low and rustic life."

However, Chatterton and Burns are examples of these "types" of Wordsworth's, corrupted. And this makes Wordsworth's allusions to the "the marvellous Boy" and "Him who walked in glory and in joy" even more telling and meaningful. Both Chatterton and Burns, despite their poetic genius were known as (or at least thought of as) profligate and died early deaths, Chatterton at 17 and Burns at 37. Though these men seemed to at least have all the trappings of the kinds of lives Wordsworth celebrates, though they "begin in gladness" in their youth, they come to bad ends, despondency and madness.

Wordsworth's fear is that he will end up like these troubled geniuses, ending in "Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty." And the leach gatherer, who has already come up for much discussion (which swong sums up well in decay), is able to provide solace from these thoughts of doom, through his simpleness and through the tragedy that seems to touch his life but not destroy.