Page:A Treasury of South African Poetry.djvu/64

38 Or was it unrequited love, And did she jilt you for another? Or murmur, gently as a dove, "I look upon you as a brother"? Or are you married to a wife Whose tongue and temper drove you frantic, And made you seek a quiet life Amid the storms of the Atlantic?

Or happiness perhaps you find Rests on a philosophic basis, And think, with stoics, that the mind The sum of human life embraces, And all the joys that men surround Are hostages to fortune given; So, like Diogenes, you found A tub is all you need to live in.

Ah! tranquil hermit of the sea— A change of wind your only sorrow, A gale your only enemy; No wife to spend, nor friend to borrow; The waves your only "bull and bear," And reckonings your only losses;— What wonder that you do not care For life's poor game of noughts and crosses? "Rip van Winkle."