2-cents a week: Breakfast #5

My failure on crafting a poem for breakfast has led me in a search for one. I chose the one by Mary Lamb because it perfectly sums up what I have been ruminating all week – the merits of breakfast, that imagery of idleness and leisure and time-taking that (rightfully should) accompany breakfast, the pleasures of consuming breakfast together and/or alone. The line that resonates with me most is, “His breakfast hour’s his hour of leisure”, so well put, so personally apt. So here is the poem in its entirety for your reading pleasure.

Breakfast

BY MARY LAMB

A dinner party, coffee, tea,

Sandwich, or supper, all may be

In their way pleasant. But to me

Not one of these deserves the praise

That welcomer of new-born days,

A breakfast, merits; ever giving

Cheerful notice we are living

Another day refreshed by sleep,

When its festival we keep.

Now although I would not slight

Those kindly words we use ‘Good night’,

Yet parting words are words of sorrow,

And may not vie with sweet ‘Good Morrow’,

With which again our friends we greet,

When in the breakfast-room we meet,

At the social table round,

Listening to the lively sound

Of those notes which never tire,

Of urn, or kettle on the fire.

Sleepy Robert never hears

Or urn, or kettle; he appears

When all have finished, one by one

Dropping off, and breakfast done.

Yet has he too his own pleasure,

His breakfast hour’s his hour of leisure;

And, left alone, he reads or muses,

Or else in idle mood he uses

To sit and watch the venturous fly,

Where the sugar’s piled high,

Clambering o’er the lumps so white,

Rocky cliffs of sweet delight.

(Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182553)