Page:Reuben and other poems.pdf/15

 No labour like the landlord’s; and who picks His own tune plays the fiddle twice as long. “What if he do live poor?” they said. “Some folk Like keeping next to getting. Past all doubt He’d some sure reasons for those foreign parts. There’s three good hands to go a-gathering— Toil, time, and thrift; and he’s a pretty purse Put by!—Why, you can see it in his face, Close though he shuts his mouth up—people do, That know the road to riches.”

Meanwhile he Reck’d little of their reckoning. Strenuous And far a-field no more, he was not yet Memory’s poor stay-at-home, upon the Past Feeding a faint life; but the Present still Stood richly friend to him, and his smooth days Not bound, yet busy, unfatigued yet full, Forward nor backward looking overmuch, But each contain’d within its own ripe round, Like windless autumn weather, steep’d in sun, And haze-enfolded, slipp’d serenely by.

To him employment and enjoyment were But one: with his own hands to rear and reap Crops he had sown on soil that he had till’d: —To tend the creatures, seek the eggs, and on The shed-door chalk the daily tally up: