Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PROSPERITY, by WALT MASON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PROSPERITY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When man is poor, and wealth or fame
Last Line: Turns good fellows into bores.
Subject(s): Fortune; Money; Upper Classes


WHEN man is poor, and wealth or fame seems far beyond his hope and aim, he is so

unobtrusive then, he makes a hit with fellow-men. He saws his wood and mows his

hay, and has a modest, winning way, and all his course of conduct shows he
doesn't, fatuous, suppose that if from mundane scenes he'd drop, the whole
blamed universe would stop. He strives to earn his weekly checks, and is a
credit to his sex. But when his eager, straining feet have landed him in Easy
street, his head swells up, he chesty grows, and of his stake he brags and
blows, he sneers at men who have not grown as big a bundle as his own. He
flaunts the package he has made, and keeps himself on dress parade, and loads
his wife and silly girls with silks and clanking gold and pearls, till people
wish he'd lose his roll, and be the old-time simple soul. Prosperity, when it
arrives, oft ruins good and useful lives. When Fortune hammers at our doors, it

turns good fellows into bores.





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