#MIDDLEBURY
The Idler
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
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?
About this poem
“The Idler” was published in “Violets and Other Tales” (Monthly Review, 1895).
About Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alice Dunbar-Nelson was born on July 19, 1875, in New Orleans. A civil rights activist as well as a poet, Dunbar-Nelson authored several books, including “Violets and Other Tales” (Monthly Review, 1895) and “The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories” (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899). She died on Sept. 18, 1935.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
This poem is in the public domain. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
