In short, when all the nation
Goes gaily off upon
Its annual vacation,
Their cares professional
No more avail to bind them:
They go at Pleasure's call
And leave their trades behind them.

Like them, departs afar
From England's fogs and vapours
The literary star,
The writer for the papers:
But not, like them, at home
Leaves he his calling's fetters:
Nought can release him from
The tyranny of Letters!

When classic scenes amid
For rest and peace he hankers,
_Amari aliquid_
His joys aesthetic cankers:
Whate'er he sees, he knows
He has to write upon it
A paragraph of prose
Or possibly a sonnet:

By mountain lakelets blue,
'Mid wild romantic heath, he's
A martyr always to
_Scribendi cacoethes_: