The Idler
Alice Dunbar-Nelson 1875 (New Orleans, Louisiana) – 1935 ( Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
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?
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Submitted by naama on July 15, 2020
Modified on April 14, 2023
- 46 sec read
- 24 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EBEB FGFG HIHI |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 814 |
Words | 154 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"The Idler" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/54199/the-idler>.
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