| |
| SELFISH, you call me? callous? Hear a tale. | |
| There was a little shallow brook that ran | |
| between low banks, scarcely a child’s leap wide, | |
| feeding a foot or two of bordering grass | |
| and, here and there, some tufts of waterflowers | 5 |
| and cresses, and tall sedge, rushes and reeds; | |
| and, where it bubbled past a poor man’s cot, | |
| he and his household came and drank of it, | |
| and all the children loved it for its flowers | |
| and counted it a playmate made for them: | 10 |
| but, not far off, a sandy arid waste | |
| where, when a winged seed rested, or a bird | |
| would drop a grain in passing, and it grew, | |
| it presently must droop and die athirst, | |
| spread its scorched silent leagues to the fierce sun; | 15 |
| and once a learned man came by and saw, | |
| and “lo,” said he, “what space for corn to grow, | |
| could we send vivifying moistures here, | |
| while look, this wanton misdirected brook | |
| watering its useless weeds!” so had it turned, | 20 |
| and made a channel for it through the waste: | |
| but its small waters could not feed that drought, | |
| and, in the wide unshadowed plain, it lagged, | |
| and shrank away, sucked upwards of the sun | |
| and downwards of the sands; so the new bed | 25 |
| lay dry, and dry the old; and the parched reeds | |
| grew brown and dwined, the stunted rushes drooped, | |
| the cresses could not root in that slacked soil, | |
| the blossoms and the sedges died away, | |
| the greenness shrivelled from the dusty banks, | 30 |
| the children missed their playmate and the flowers, | |
| and thirsted in hot noon-tides for the draught | |
| grown over precious now their mother went | |
| a half-mile to the well to fill her pails; | |
| and not two ears of corn the more were green. | 35 |
| |
| Tell me, what should I do? I take my life | |
| as I have found it, and the work it brings; | |
| well, and the life is kind, the work is light, | |
| shall I go fret and scorn myself for that? | |
| and must I sally forth to hack and hew | 40 |
| at giants or at windmills, leave the post | |
| I could have filled, the work I could have wrought, | |
| for some magnificent mad enterprise, | |
| some task to lift a mountain, drain a sea, | |
| tread down a Titan, build a pyramid? | 45 |
| No, let me, like a bird bred in the cage, | |
| that, singing its own self to gladness there, | |
| makes some who hear it gladder, take what part | |
| I have been born to, and make joy of it. * * * * * | |
| Oh chiding friend, I am not of your kind, | 50 |
| you strenuous souls who cannot think you live | |
| unless you feel your limbs, though ’twere by aches: | |
| great boisterous winds you are, who must rush on | |
| and sweep all on your way or drop and die, | |
| but I am only a small fluttering breeze | 55 |
| to coax the roses open: let me be; | |
| perhaps I have my use no less than you. | |
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