REUBEN
No labour like the landlord’s; and who picks
His own tune plays the fiddle twice as long.
“What if he do live poor?” they said. “Some folk
Like keeping next to getting. Past all doubt
He’d some sure reasons for those foreign parts.
There’s three good hands to go a-gathering—
Toil, time, and thrift; and he’s a pretty purse
Put by!—Why, you can see it in his face,
Close though he shuts his mouth up—people do,
That know the road to riches.”
Meanwhile he
Reck’d little of their reckoning. Strenuous
And far a-field no more, he was not yet
Memory’s poor stay-at-home, upon the Past
Feeding a faint life; but the Present still
Stood richly friend to him, and his smooth days
Not bound, yet busy, unfatigued yet full,
Forward nor backward looking overmuch,
But each contain’d within its own ripe round,
Like windless autumn weather, steep’d in sun,
And haze-enfolded, slipp’d serenely by.
To him employment and enjoyment were
But one: with his own hands to rear and reap
Crops he had sown on soil that he had till’d:
—To tend the creatures, seek the eggs, and on
The shed-door chalk the daily tally up:
15
