Morning Meditations

Thomas Hood (1799–1845)

LET Taylor preach, upon a morning breezy,

How well to rise while nights and larks are flying—

For my part, getting up seems not so easy

By half as lying.

What if the lark does carol in the sky,

Soaring beyond the sight to find him out,—

Wherefore am I to rise at such a fly?

I ’m not a trout.

Talk not to me of bees and such-like hums,

The smell of sweet herbs at the morning prime,—

Only lie long enough, and bed becomes

A bed of time.

To me Dan Phœbus and his car are naught,

His steeds that paw impatiently about,—

Let them enjoy, say I, as horses ought,

The first turn-out!

Right beautiful the dewy meads appear

Besprinkled by the rosy-fingered girl;

What then,—if I prefer my pillow-beer

To early pearl?

My stomach is not ruled by other men’s,

And, grumbling for a reason, quaintly begs

Wherefore should master rise before the hens

Have laid their eggs?

Why from a comfortable pillow start

To see faint flushes in the east awaken?

A fig, say I, for any streaky part,

Excepting bacon.

An early riser Mr. Gray has drawn,

Who used to haste the dewy grass among,

“To meet the sun upon the upland lawn,”—

Well,—he died young.

With charwomen such early hours agree,

And sweeps that earn betimes their bit and sup;

But I ’m no climbing boy, and need not be

All up,—all up!

So here I lie, my morning calls deferring,

Till something nearer to the stroke of noon;—

A man that ’s fond precociously of stirring

Must be a spoon.