University of Virginia Library

Work! But when can I work, pray, when?
At morn? I have not yet done my doze.
At noon? But too heavy the heat is then.
At eve? But eve is the time for repose.
At night? But at night I'm asleep again.
Work? What is it? As I suppose,
'Tis the vain invention of idle men;
Whom the Devil could help to no happier plan
For getting thro' time, than this idiot trick
Of adding fatigue to fatigue; like a man
Who carries his boots at the end of a stick
Slung behind him, to add to the heat
And the weight on his back; as, with limping feet,
Thro' the flints that tear, and the thorns that prick,
He fares barefooted, and boasts he can
With such bootless trouble get on so quick.
If you chanced, as you wander'd, to meet with a brook
Flowing among the mountains, say
Would you hasten back to the house, and look
For a bucket to fetch the water away
Into the valley? Down from the hills
Let the water flow as the water wills.
When it gets to the valley at last, some day,
There will it stay, unashamed? or say
“To work! to work!” and begin with pain
To run up the hills and back again?
Enough is doing around it. Why
Should itself be doing aught? The sun
Reveals to it all that, up in the sky,
The weather is going to do, or hath done.
The moon will bathe in it by and by;
And the stars, that follow her one by one,
Seek and discover it,
Peeping thro'
Clouds that flow over it,
Changed in hue
By winds that o'erhover it,
Hid in the blue.
Barks, too, along it
From shore to shore
Will wander, and throng it
With sail and oar.
Each bending double,
With sweat o' the brow
From toil and trouble,
The rowers row,
But, how fast soever their oars may fall
The water, which takes no trouble at all,
Will still be the first to leap to shore.
And, what is more, when the voyage is o'er,
Will still be as fresh as it was before.

Lie on the bank, then! idly lie
Beside me, watching the wave flow by.
And, if Fancy follow it, heed not why.
Heed not why, and heed not where.
Fancy will find in the summer air
Whatever she seeks, for her home is there.
Let us open our hearts to the summer sky.
From mine I have let this fable fly.
Who knows where it may 'light? Not I.