Let me alone to my idle pleasure;

What do I care for toil or treasure?

To-morrow I'll work, if work you crave,
Like a king, a statesman, or a slave;

But not to-day, no! nor to-morrow,

If from my drowsy ease I borrow

No health and strength to bear my boat Through the great life-ocean where we float.

Under the leaves, amid the grass,

Lazily the day shall pass,

Yet not be wasted. Must I ever

Climb up the hill-tops of Endeavour?

I hate you all, ye musty books!

Ye know not how the morning looks ;—
Ye smell of studies long and keen;—
I'll change the white leaves for the green!
My Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope,
I'll leave them for the grassy slope,

Where other singers, sweet as they
Chant hymn, and song, and roundelay.
What do I care for Kant or Hegel,

For Leibnitz, Newton, Locke, or Schlegel?
Did they exhaust philosophy?

I'll find it in the earth or sky,

In woodbine wreaths, in ears of corn,

Or flickering shadows of the morn;

And if I gather nothing new,
At least I'll keep my spirit true
And bathe my heart in honey dew.

This day I'll neither think or read
Of great Crimean toil or deed.
To-morrow, as in days agone,
I'll pray for peace by valour won,
For speedy triumph of the right,
And Earth's repose in Love's own light.

To-day I need a truce myself

From books and men, from care and pelf,

And I will have it in cool lanes,

O'erarching like cathedral fanes,

With elm and beech of sturdy girth; Or on the bosom of green earth

Amid the daisies ;-dreaming, dozing,

Fallow, fallow, and reposing!

Betchworth, August, 1855.