RPO -- Robert Fuller Murray : The Waster's Presentiment

Robert Fuller Murray (1863-1894)

The Waster's Presentiment

1I shall be spun. There is a voice within

2 Which tells me plainly I am all undone;

3For though I toil not, neither do I spin,

4 I shall be spun.

5April approaches. I have not begun

6 Schwegler or Mackintosh, nor will begin

7Those lucid works till April 21.

8So my degree I do not hope to win,

9 For not by ways like mine degrees are won;

10And though, to please my uncle, I go in,

11 I shall be spun.

Notes

1] spun: failed (OED, "spin," v., 13).

3] "Consider the lilies, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Luke 12.27).

6] Schwegler or Mackintosh: perhaps Albert Schwegler (1819-57), German historian of philosophy, and Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), modern historian.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Robert F. Murray: his Poems, with a memoir by Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, 1894): xxxv-vi. PR 5101 M5A6 1894 Robarts Library
First publication date: 1894
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2001
Recent editing: 1:2002/10/5

Form: rondeau
Rhyme: abab bab abab

Other poems by Robert Fuller Murray