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Live Stream: The Idler By Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Written by Rachael Norris, 16th June 2020

On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm you can join us on Facebook live for your bi-weekly dose of literature read aloud. We'll be looking at poems and texts that inspire us, reading along together and offering the chance for people to share their thoughts and get involved in discussions. If you'd like your lunch time to involve some literature, sit back and enjoy.

Today we are reading The Idler By Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson with Natalie.

https://www.facebook.com/thereaderorg/videos/261250318443564/

The Idler 
An idle lingerer on the wayside's road,
  He gathers up his work and yawns away;
  A little longer, ere the tiresome load
  Shall be reduced to ashes or to clay.
  No matter if the world has marched along,
  And scorned his slowness as it quickly passed;
  No matter, if amid the busy throng,
  He greets some face, infantile at the last.
  His mission? Well, there is but one,
  And if it is a mission he knows it, nay,
  To be a happy idler, to lounge and sun,
  And dreaming, pass his long-drawn days away.
  So dreams he on, his happy life to pass
  Content, without ambitions painful sighs,
  Until the sands run down into the glass;
  He smiles—content—unmoved and dies.
  And yet, with all the pity that you feel
  For this poor mothling of that flame, the world;
  Are you the better for your desperate deal,
  When you, like him, into infinitude are hurled?
By Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

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