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A rural schoolboy's revolt OR An antipastorale

Who prefers to have flies in his bedchamber?
Or for that matter, all manner of insects?
How romantic to consider the prospects
Of a cricket's chirps that rob one of slumber?
Yes, the stars are bright and the grass is tender,
Arcadian dreams are gay in many respects;
Yet lying in Elysian fields one suspects
That adders do not make for sweet surrender.

It is much to the credit of Tennyson
And other fools of the English Lake District
To pen rhymes for - a cloud, a lark, a peasant
By the fireside in their stately mansions
But who asks the cottar before they depict
A fancied idyll that only sounds pleasant?

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