An idle lingerer on the wayside’s road,
He gathers up his work and yawns away;
A little longer, ere the tiresome load
Shall be reduced to ashes or to clay.

No matter if the world has marched along,
And scorned his slowness as it quickly passed;
No matter, if amid the busy throng,
He greets some face, infantile at the last.

His mission? Well, there is but one,
And if it is a mission he knows it, nay,
To be a happy idler, to lounge and sun,
And dreaming, pass his long-drawn days away.

So dreams he on, his happy life to pass
Content, without ambitions painful sighs,
Until the sands run down into the glass;
He smiles—content—unmoved and dies

And yet, with all the pity that you feel
For this poor mothling of that flame, the world;
Are you the better for your desperate deal,
When you, like him, into infinitude are hurled?

                 1

Wake! For the Sun, who scattered into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
    Drives Night along with them from Heav’n and strikes
The Sultán’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.

                 2

Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
    “When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside?”

                 3

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted—“Open, then, the Door!
    You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”

                 12

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
    Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

                 13

Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
    Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

                 14

Look to the blowing Rose about us—“Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow,
    At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”

                 15

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
    Alike to no such aureate Earth are turned
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

                 19

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
    That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropped in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

                 20
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
    Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

                 21

Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and future Fears:
    Tomorrow!—Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years.

                 22

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath pressed,
    Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.

                 23

And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
    Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend—ourselves to make a Couch—for whom?

                 24

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
    Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

                 71

The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

                 72

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die,
    Lift not your hands to It for help—for It
As impotently moves as you or I.