Fancy and Fact

O, for a day with just nothing to do,

But loaf by the crick where the water is blue;

Away from the noise of the workaday throng

With nothing to hear but a wild bird’s song.

With nothing to see but a cloudless sky

That mirrors itself in the crick close by,

With nothing to worry, but sit and dream

On the moss-grown bank of the limpid stream.

O, for a day like this, but no;

The bank of the crick is deep with snow,

The skies are forbidding, cold and gray

And the crick is covered with ice today,

And the only sound is the wintry wail

That tosses the branches along the vale,

And there’s nothing to see but ice and snow

And so I will take my hat and go

Down town to the hives of busy men

And take up my office toil again.

Jan. 12, 1914