Robert Chambers – The Nook [Poem]

Since thus open pleasures are viler than tangle,
And true ones, like trout, must be caught by the angle,
Perfect joy, it seems clear, must by hook or by crook,
Be obtained in a place called, par excellence, Nook .
The Nook!  how endearing and pleasant the word –
As bieldy and warm as the nest of a bird!
Sure a place so designed must know little of care,
And summer must linger eternally there;
No resting-place, surely, for sorrow or sin,
But all blossom without and all pleasure within :
There children must sport, all unknowing of pain,
And old folk, looking on, become children again.
Sad Poortith will pass it ungrudgingly by,
And Wealth only cast a solicitous eye.
‘Twere surely fit scene for a Goddess’ descent –
The goddess long lost to us – holy Content.

Such thoughts it is easy to string up together ;
But reason might smash them perhaps with a feather ,
And things might be in such a concatenation,
That the Nook might become quite a scene of vexation.
Yet of this, as it happens there’s no chance or little,
Unless, like the small pox, vexation turns smittle;
For here lives good _________, the blythest and best,
Who is happy himself and makes happy the rest,
Whose temper is such, as he proves by his look,
That joy would be with him, even not in a nook ;
Who has wit for all topics, and worth with it all,
And while mirth is in presence, keeps Sense within call.
To the Nook, why a man such as this is as pat,
As the foot to the shoe, or the head to the hat;
And so well do they answer to each other’s quality,
So mixed is the man with his pleasant locality,
That a question it seems, and I cannot decide it,
Whether he or the Nook gives the most of the “ridet.”

October 1834