Books Poem by Della Hodgson James

Oh! Ho! Oh! Hum!
  De Doodle De-dum!
I want to get back for a spell,
  They say there are pleasures
In travels and scenes,
  In countries abroad
Where there's palaces and kings,
  Ho Hum! Yet you never can tell.
I'm tired out with
  Unfamiliar sights,
Of tipping the chauffeurs
  To left and to right.
I'm tired of butlers
  Of waiters and maids,
I want to get back, I think
  (I'd be a fool if I strayed,)
From these restful scenes
  Of life.

Let me live, while I live
  In the hearing of the mill,
There's no other place in life for me.
  Here I have always lived
And I want to live still,
  Where echoes, re-echo
From every hill,
  They are a cloak of memories
To me.

  Through (Books) I am often carried
To nations afar,
  To jungles and deserts
To islands and isles,
  And around the world
For many a mile,

  To cities with gates A jar.

But there's no place to stop
  There's no place to rest,
As on my imaginary travels I hide
  That's better than a moss pillow,
On my own hills breast
  No skies more bluer,
No brighter, the stars,
  As I roam o'er foreign countries afar
So here let me live
  And die.