I meanwhile in the populous house apart Sit snugly chambered, and my silent art Uninterrupted, unremitting ply Before the dawn, by morning lamplight, by The glow of smelting noon, and when the sun Dips past my westering hill and day is done; So, bending still over my trade of words, I hear the morning and the evening birds, The morning and the evening stars behold; So there apart I sit as once of old Napier in wizard Merchiston; and my Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry Wonder askance. What ails the boss? they ask. Him, richest of the rich, an endless task Before the earliest birds or servants stir Calls and detains him daylong prisoner? He whose innumerable dollars hewed This cleft in the boar and devil-haunted wood, And bade therein, from sun to seas and skies, His many-windowed, painted palace rise Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill, A wonder in the forest glade: he still,
Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark, Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk. We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why? My reverend washman and wise butler cry. Meanwhile at times the manifold Imperishable perfumes of the past And coloured pictures rise on me thick and fast: And I remember the white rime, the loud Lamplitten city, shops, and the changing crowd; And I remember home and the old time, The winding river, the white moving rhyme, The autumn robin by the riverside That pipes in the grey eve.
The old lady (so they say), but I Admire your young vitality. Still brisk of foot, still busy and keen In and about and up and down.
I hear you pass with bustling feet The long verandahs round, and beat Your bell, and “Lotu! Lotu!” cry; Thus calling our queer company, In morning or in evening dim, To prayers and the oft mangled hymn.
All day you watch across the sky The silent, shining cloudlands ply, That, huge as countries, swift as birds, Beshade the isles by halves and thirds,