In this delightful poem, English poet John Kenyon* (1783-1856) mocks the pretentious and complacent 19th-century British traveler who avoids mixing with the local populations, learns little that touches or changes him, then returns home to pontificate on (and brag about) what he has observed from the comfort of his train car. Kenyon reminds us that if we fail to open ourselves emotionally to that which we encounter as we drift around the bay that is our life, we risk becoming like the well-travelled oyster who — “shut within
his sulky shell, he nought hath seen.”