The Beggar Speaks

A poem by Vachel Lindsay

"What Mister Moon Said to Me."

Come, eat the bread of idleness,
Come, sit beside the spring:
Some of the flowers will keep awake,
Some of the birds will sing.

Come, eat the bread no man has sought
For half a hundred years:
Men hurry so they have no griefs,
Nor even idle tears:

They hurry so they have no loves:
They cannot curse nor laugh -
Their hearts die in their youth with neither
Grave nor epitaph.

My bread would make them careless,
And never quite on time -
Their eyelids would be heavy,
Their fancies full of rhyme:

Each soul a mystic rose-tree,
Or a curious incense tree:
. . . .
Come, eat the bread of idleness,
Said Mister Moon to me.