Being by Robert P. Tristram Coffin Lyrics

Being


He kept a house beneath a hill,
Lonelier than a whippoorwill;
His panes were bare of any shade;
Clamming was his only trade.
The spruces came up to his house,
He was quiet as a mouse;
He had no garden and no friend,
He did not borrow things or lend,
Never in all his silent life
Had he found room for any wife
Of his own or other men's;
He'd never kept as much as hens.

But he could dig clams with the best;
He always wore a blue serge vest
When he was turning up the flats.
Naturally, he had some cats,
Two big old tommies, sleek and sunny,
The color of white-clover honey.
They were a family of three,
Contented as a squash-vine bee.
Snug and still between the tides,
They followed the sun around the sides
Of the fish-house, lost, unseeing,
Busy with the work of being.