Plain living and high thinking are no more.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells.
How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!
The moving accident is not my trade; To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.