Violets and Other Tales/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?