Lollygags

Usage examples of dallies.

One reason why the scholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real to his fellows and serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself, but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness, where he dallies some years before he begins his task in life.

At Hell gates, where he dallies in speech with his leman Sin to gain a passage from the lower World, Satan is "the subtle Fiend," in the garden of Paradise he is "the Tempter" and "the Enemy of Mankind," putting his fraud upon Eve he is the "wily Adder," leading her in full course to the tree he is "the dire Snake," springing to his natural height before the astonished gaze of the cherubs he is "the grisly King.

He contended that it is always the intellect that fools us, because it receives the mes sage first, but rather than giving it credence and acting on it immediately, it dallies with it instead.

I will not mimic yonder oak That dallies with dead leaves ev'n while the primrose peeps.