TO write as your sweet mother does
Is all you wish to do.
Play, sing, and smile for others, Rose!
Let others write for you.
Or mount again your Dartmoor grey,
And I will walk beside,
Until we reach that quiet bay
Which only hears the tide.
Then wave at me your pencil, then
At distance bid me stand,
Before the cavern’d cliff, again
The creature of your hand.
And bid me then go past the nook
To sketch me less in size;
There are but few content to look
So little in your eyes.
Delight us with the gifts you have,
And wish for none beyond:
To some be gay, to some be grave,
To one (blest youth!) be fond.
Pleasures there are how close to Pain,
And better unpossest!
Let poetry’s too throbbing vein
Lie quiet in your breast.
Walter Savage Landor
