IDLENESS. ODE VII. Christopher Smart Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. T42626 K041581.000 Smart, Christopher, 1722-1771. Poems on several occasions: By Christopher Smart, A. M. Fellow of Pembroke-Hall, Cambridge. London printed for the author, by W. Strahan; and sold by J. Newbery, at the Bible and Sun, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, MDCCLII. 1752 pp. 19-20. [16],230p.,plates; 4⁰.

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IDLENESS . ODE VII . GOddess of ease , leave Lethe's brink , Obsequious to the Muse and me ; For once endure the pain to think , Oh ! sweet insensibility ! Sister of peace and indolence , Bring , Muse , bring numbers soft and slow , Elaborately void of sense , And sweetly thoughtless let them flow . Near some cowslip-painted mead , There let me doze out the dull hours , And under me let Flora spread , A sofa of her softest flow'rs . Where , Philomel , your notes you breathe Forth from behind the neighbouring pine , And murmurs of the stream beneath Still flow in unison with thine . For thee , O Idleness , the woes Of life we patiently endure , Thou art the source whence labour flows , We shun thee but to make thee sure . For who'd sustain war's toil and waste , Or who th' hoarse thund'ring of the sea , But to be idle at the last , And find a pleasing end in thee .