What more on a summer afternoon
Could I require?
Light without heat, my work-week done,
A free desire,
And the world from my balcony composed
Like a Renaissance
Picture, the elements disposed
With significance
Too obvious to miss: the trees
Are Nature’s beauty;
My notebook the imperious
Summons to Duty.
Neither could Lust’s abrupt demands
Have been omitted:
A sunbathing girl on the next roof stands,
My gaze permitted
As though she did not notice it; and last
The stereo
Is playing Mozart’s movements, fast
Then aching-slow,
A sign for the already adequate
Engrossing Past.
Everything’s given, though I know it
Cannot last—
What one impetuous faculty
Would quickly choose
The others as necessarily
Loudly refuse.
The Body turns to her, the Soul’s at rest
In sexless nature;
Ambition writes, but Conscience knows the best
Is done, and culture.
And so the day goes by. Is life
Thus to be wasted,
Force spent in an internal strife
And nothing tasted?
Our fate is not to be the sum
Of all these joys,
But to offer them a medium
And counterpoise.
