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| IS it so small a thing | |
| To have enjoy’d the sun, | |
| To have lived light in the spring, | |
| To have loved, to have thought, to have done; | |
| To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes; | 5 |
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| That we must feign a bliss | |
| Of doubtful future date, | |
| And while we dream on this | |
| Lose all our present state, | |
| And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? | 10 |
| |
| Not much, I know, you prize | |
| What pleasures may be had, | |
| Who look on life with eyes | |
| Estranged, like mine, and sad: | |
| And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you; | 15 |
| |
| Who ’s loth to leave this life | |
| Which to him little yields: | |
| His hard-task’d sunburnt wife, | |
| His often-labour’d fields; | |
| The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew. | 20 |
| |
| But thou, because thou hear’st | |
| Men scoff at Heaven and Fate; | |
| Because the gods thou fear’st | |
| Fail to make blest thy state, | |
| Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are. | 25 |
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| I say, Fear not! life still | |
| Leaves human effort scope. | |
| But, since life teems with ill, | |
| Nurse no extravagant hope. | |
| Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair. | 30 |
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