While others are asking for beauty or fame, <br />Or praying to know that for which they should pray, <br />Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame, <br />Or chasing the Muses the weary and grey, <br />The sage has found out a more excellent way - <br />To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers, <br />And his humble petition puts up day by day, <br />For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. <br /> <br />Inventors may bow to the God that is lame, <br />And crave from the fire on his stithy a ray; <br />Philosophers kneel to the God without name, <br />Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they; <br />The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay, <br />The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours; <br />But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay, <br />For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. <br /> <br />Oh! grant me a life without pleasure or blame <br />(As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day <br />With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame)! <br />O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, <br />Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play <br />With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! <br />And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, <br />For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. <br /> <br />ENVOY. <br /> <br />Gods, grant or withhold it; your 'yea' and your 'nay' <br />Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: <br />But life IS worth living, and here we would stay <br />For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.<br /><br />Andrew Lang<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ballade-of-true-wisdom/
