Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask <br />A fleeting holiday, a little week. <br />What if the jaded steer who all day long <br />Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, <br />When evening came, and her sweet cooling hour, <br />Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, <br />Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams <br />Invited him to slake his burning thirst? <br />The man were crabbed who should say him nay, <br />The man were churlish who should drive him thence. <br /> <br /> <br />A blessing light upon your worthy heads, <br />Ye hospitable pair! I may not come <br />To catch, on Clifden's heights, the summer gale; <br />I may not come to taste the Avon wave; <br />Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers, <br />To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, <br />Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, <br />Shaped his adventurous course to London walls! <br />Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! <br />Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain; <br />For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales, <br />Another minstrel cometh. Youth endeared, <br />God and good angels guide thee on thy road, <br />And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.<br /><br />Charles Lamb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-addressed-from-london-to-sara-and-s-t-c-at-bristol-in-the-summer-of-1796/
