Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/108

104 Comes the prudent matron close behind him,

On her way to market, shop, or call,

Quite surprised, and full of grief to find him

Playing truant by the garden wall.

Ah, his pace from thence is duly quickened,

To the crowded school-room he must come,

Be he e'er so weary, or so sickened,

Of its tedious tasks and ceaseless hum.

Soon each actor to the part decreed him,

In the drama of the passing day,

Unresisting hastens, and the freedom

That he sighs for, trafficks for his pay.

This, because our life was made for labor,

And its purpose we may not gainsay.

TEN.

ELEVEN.