A plague on the whimsies of sickly folk!
What am I to do? What not?
Why, here's the fair sky, and here you lie
With your couch in a sunny spot.
For this you were puling whenever you spoke,
Craving to lie outside,
And now you'll be sure not to bide.

You won't lie still for an hour;
You'll want to be back to your bower—
Longing, and never enjoying,
Shifting from yea to nay.
For all that you taste is cloying,
And sweet is the far away.

'Tis hard to be sick, but worse
To have to sit by and nurse,
For that is single, but this is double,
The mind in pain, and the hands in trouble.
The life men live is a weary coil,
There is no rest from woe and toil;
And if there's aught elsewhere more dear
Than drawing breath as we do here,
That darkness holds
In black inextricable folds.

Lovesick it seems are we
Of this, whate'er it be,
That gleams upon the earth;
Because that second birth,
That other life no man hath tried.

What lies below
No god will show,
And we to whom the truth's denied
Drift upon idle fables to and fro.