My Study

LET others strive for wealth or praise Who care to win; I count myself full blest, if He, Who made my study fair to see, Grant me but length of quiet days To muse therein.

Its walls, with peach and cherry clad, From yonder wold Unbosomed, seem as if thereon September sunbeams ever shone; They make the air look warm and glad When winds are cold.

Around its door a clematis Her arms doth tie; Through leafy lattices I view Its endless corridors of blue Curtained with clouds; its ceiling is The marbled sky.

A verdant carpet smoothly laid Doth oft invite My silent steps; thereon the sun With silver thread of dew hath spun Devices rare—the warp of shade, The weft of light.

Here dwell my chosen books, whose leaves With healing breath The ache of discontent assuage, And speak from each illumined page The patience that my soul reprieves From inward death;

Some perish with a season's wind, And some endure; One robes itself in snow, and one In raiment of the rising sun Bordered with gold; in all I find God's signature.

As on my grassy couch I lie, From hedge and tree Musicians pipe; or if the heat Subdue the birds, one crooneth sweet Whose labour is a lullaby— The slumbrous bee.

The sun my work doth overlook With searching light; The serious moon, the flickering star, My midnight lamp and candle are; A soul unhardened is the book Wherein I write.

There labouring, my heart is eased Of every care; Yet often wonderstruck I stand, With earnest gaze but idle hand, Abashed—for God Himself is pleased To labour there.

Ashamed my faultful task to spell, I watch how grows The Master's perfect colour-scheme Of sunset, or His simpler dream Of moonlight, or that miracle We name a rose.

Dear Earth, one thought alone doth grieve— The tender dread Of parting from thee; as a child, Who painted while his father smiled, Then watched him paint, is loth to leave And go to bed.