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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SHEPHERD-BOY AND THE WOLF by AESOP ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 8. AMORET by MARK AKENSIDE PROLOGUE TO THE PLAY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER (DEDICATED TO MISS ELLA F. KENNEDY) by SARA S. BASHEFKIN EUTHANASIA by BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH BUGAYEV SECOND FIDDLE by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON ANSWER by MARY ELIZABETH COLMAN |