A dreaming boy in a painted field

Wasted Days

Poem·about 1 min

"And in the night-time no man gathers fruit."
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Poem

From a Picture Painted by Miss V. T.

A fair slim boy not made for this world’s pain,With hair of gold thick clustering round his ears,And longing eyes half veiled by foolish tearsLike bluest water seen through mists of rain;Pale cheeks whereon no kiss hath left its stain,Red under-lip drawn in for fear of love,And white throat whiter than the breast of dove⁠—Alas! Alas! If all should be in vain.

Corn-fields behind, and reapers all a-rowIn weariest labour toiling wearily,To no sweet sound of laughter or of lute.

And careless of the crimson sunset-glow,The boy still dreams; nor knows that night is night,And in the night-time no man gathers fruit.

Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0 1.0)

In brief

Summary

A sonnet describing a painting, as its subtitle says: 'From a Picture Painted by Miss V. T.' The first eight lines portray a slim, golden-haired boy 'not made for this world's pain', with tear-veiled eyes, pale unkissed cheeks and a lip drawn in 'for fear of love', and end with the fear that 'all should be in vain'. The last six lines turn to the background: reapers toiling in the cornfields without music or laughter, and a crimson sunset the boy ignores. He goes on dreaming, not knowing that night is night, 'And in the night-time no man gathers fruit.'

Key themes

"A fair slim boy not made for this world's pain,"

Related works

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Summary

The octave describes the boy in the picture feature by feature: 'A fair slim boy not made for this world's pain', with golden hair 'thick clustering round his ears', 'longing eyes half veiled by foolish tears' like blue water seen through rain, pale cheeks 'whereon no kiss hath left its stain', a red under-lip 'drawn in for fear of love', and a throat 'whiter than the breast of dove'. The portrait ends in a sigh: 'Alas! Alas! If all should be in vain.'

The sestet, set out as two groups of three lines, moves behind the boy. In the cornfields the reapers work in a row, 'In weariest labour toiling wearily', with no laughter or lute to lighten them. The boy, 'careless of the crimson sunset-glow', still dreams, and does not know 'that night is night', though 'in the night-time no man gathers fruit'. The contrast between the idle, beautiful dreamer and the labouring reapers gives the poem its title: his are the wasted days.

Characters

  • The boy

    The idle dreamer

    The figure in the painting: slim and fair, with golden hair, tear-veiled eyes, pale unkissed cheeks and a lip drawn in 'for fear of love'. He dreams on while reapers toil behind him, heedless of the sunset and of the night in which no fruit can be gathered.

Themes

Beauty and innocence

The boy is drawn as untouched and fragile: 'not made for this world's pain', with cheeks 'whereon no kiss hath left its stain' and a lip 'drawn in for fear of love'. His beauty is described with loving care, down to the 'white throat whiter than the breast of dove', but the octave ends in worry that such beauty may come to nothing: 'If all should be in vain.'

Idleness and labour

Behind the dreaming boy stand the reapers, 'all a-row / In weariest labour toiling wearily'. The poem sets his dreams against their work, and the last line brings a warning: 'in the night-time no man gathers fruit'. The time for harvest is short, and the boy, 'careless of the crimson sunset-glow', is letting it pass without gathering anything.

Quotes

Every line is copied from the text and links to where it appears.

Context

The subtitle presents the sonnet as a response to a painting, 'From a Picture Painted by Miss V. T.', and the artist is identified only by these initials. The poem follows the picture from foreground to background, first the boy and then the reapers and the sunset behind him. Its fourteen lines are set out as eight, three and three, dividing the portrait of the boy from the scene around him.

About this edition

  • Text: the complete work from Standard Ebooks, released into the public domain (CC0 1.0). We change only the layout.
  • Download the EPUB of the whole book it comes from, free, for any e-reader.
  • Every quotation and glossary word in these notes is checked against the text.