| |
| OH, Gold! Why call we misers miserable? | |
| Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall; | |
| Theirs is the best bower-anchor, the chain-cable | |
| Which holds fast other pleasures great and small. | |
| Ye who but see the saving man at table | 5 |
| And scorn his temperate board, as none at all, | |
| And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing, | |
| Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring.… | |
| |
| Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind | |
| To build a college, or to found a race, | 10 |
| An hospital, a church—and leave behind | |
| Some dome surmounted by his meagre face; | |
| Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind, | |
| Even with the very ore that makes them base; | |
| Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation, | 15 |
| Or revel in the joys of calculation.… | |
| |
| “Love rules the camp, the court, the grove—for love | |
| Is heaven, and heaven is love:” so sings the bard; | |
| Which it were rather difficult to prove | |
| (A thing with poetry in general hard). | 20 |
| Perhaps there may be something in “the grove,” | |
| At least it rhymes to “love”; but I’m prepared | |
| To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental) | |
| If “courts” and “camps” be quite so sentimental. | |
| |
| But if Love don’t, Cash does, and Cash alone: | 25 |
| Cash rules the grove, and fells it too besides; | |
| Without cash, camps were thin, and courts were none; | |
| Without cash, Malthus tells you, “take no brides.” | |
| So Cash rules Love the ruler, on his own | |
| High ground, as virgin Cynthia sways the tides: | 30 |
| And as for “Heaven being Love,” why not say honey | |
| Is wax? Heaven is not Love, ’tis Matrimony. | |
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