Idleness

AND slow and slower still, day after day,
Come the sad hours with beauteous upturned eyes
Gleaming with hopes I may not realize,
And seeming in their earnestness to say
Entreatingly: “O send us not away
All empty-handed as we came: arise,
Give us at least, some promise we shall prize
To be fulfilled though after long delay.”
And I, although I weep to see them pass
With lingering pace and disappointed look,
Am lifeless as a statue bound with brass,
And listless as an open, loose-leaved book,
Turned by the wind ; yea, passive as the grass,
Weak as the wavelet of a summer brook.