While others are asking for beauty or fame, Or praying to know that for which they should pray, Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame, Or chasing the Muses the weary and gray, The sage has found out a more excellent way- To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers, And his humble petition puts up day by day, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. Inventors may bow to the god that is lame, And crave from the fire on his stithy a ray; Philosophers kneel to the god without name, Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they; The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay, The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours; But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. Oh! grant me a life without pleasure or blame! (As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame)! Oh, grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. Envoy Gods, give or withhold it; your 'yea' and your 'nay' Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: But life is worth living, and here we would stay For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A CHRISTMAS HYMN by CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER AUTUMN MALADE by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 30. AL-HADIL by EDWIN ARNOLD EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 31. 'TIS YIELDING GAINS THE LOVER VICTORY by PHILIP AYRES IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN DESCRIPTION OF TUNBRIDGE by JOHN BYROM THE MIDDLEBURY, VERMOUNT, FAIR by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY |