⁠For the walrus, a worthy quarry!
From yonder mast a flag streams out
⁠As bold as a royal pennant;
I can watch the good ship lunge about
⁠From this tower of which I am tenant;
But oh, might I be in the battling ship,
⁠Might I seize the rudder and steer her,
How gay o'er the foaming reef we'd slip
⁠Like the sea-gulls circling near her!

Were I a hunter wandering free.
⁠Or a soldier in some sort of fashion,
Or if I at least a man might be.
⁠The heav'ns would grant me my passion.

But now I must sit as fine and still
⁠As a child in its best of dresses.
And only in secret may have my will
⁠And give to the wind my tresses.

Deep in a dell a woodsman's house
⁠Has sunk in wild dilapidation;
There buried under vines and boughs
⁠I often sit in contemplation.
So dense the tangle that the day
⁠Through heavy lashes can but glimmer;
⁠The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer
By overshadowing tree-trunks gray.

Within that dell I love to hear
⁠The flies with their tumultuous humming,
And solitary beetles near