The Idler

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?