Classic Poem

This is the house where I lie down
At length to call the world my own;
And no one spies on what goes on.

This is the house that cannot yield:
Who built it knew well how to build.
None trespasses across my field;

Nor comes betimes because he thought
If late, I might be up and out;
Here I am safe from fools like that.

The light is not as, shall we say,
The diamond dome above the Bay
When light looks black at topmost day;

Nor such as, ere the sun is set,
Shines level where the boughs are wet,
And it is early April yet.

No, I acknowledge it is dim;
But all the more tempered for him
Who has seen all that life could limn.

Before I took this holiday,
I often heard companions say:
" I would that I were well away. "

And well away from all turmoil,
And well away from all the coil
Of anxious engaging toil.

Tiber and Nile and Thames of course,
Raise lordlier walls to men of force:
But this becomes a man of verse.

You must not judge by my retreat
That I found Life not wildly sweet,
Or that I turn my back to it.

'Twas pleasant as I saw it played.
But why should one whose looks grow staid
Hang on unto the harlequinade?

It needs no skill to be prepared
For the long solitude unshared:
Hither my old grandmother fared.