Page:Essays in idleness.djvu/102

 90 that good old-fashioned simplicity which was content to take short obvious views of life. It is best to leave ethics alone, and ride as lightly as we may. The finest poems of battle and of camp have been written in this unincumbered spirit, as, for example, that lovely little snatch of song from "Rokeby:"—

And this other, far less familiar, which I quote from Lockhart's Spanish Ballads, and which is fitly called "The Wandering Knight's Song:"—

"My ornaments are arms,

My pastime is in war,

My bed is cold upon the wold,

My lamp yon star.

"My journeyings are long,

My slumbers short and broken;

From hill to hill I wander still,

Kissing thy token.