Classic Poem

All to the rich doth not belong,
Nor to the proud the whole world's peace:
Here in these woods are books and song,
Labors and loves that never cease:
From care we revel in release,
And seek not what we could not find,
Glory in gold—but look within,
Hoping our harvest in the mind.

Not learning of the learned sort,
Not wisdom of the worldly wise
(We live remote and life is short),
But such as comes to common eyes:
To watch Antares at his rise,
The Greater and the Lesser Bear,
To find Andromeda, or tell
The stars of Cassiopeia's chair.

Wise men and true in cities dwell,
But ah! one dwells there—Discontent!
With whom to live, if less than hell,
Is like it: there of late I went;
To my friend's door my steps I bent,
And found him pillowed—not in pain,
But watchers by; he knew me not:
Midnight was brooding on his brain!

O God! that good man—oh! for gold,
For gold that father, friend, high-priest
Of all the charities, had sold
His faculties, and now the least
Of all that ministered—his beast—
Might have stood sovereign over him:
No motion in the mind—that brow—
Thought's beacon tower, and now so dim!

Never again, my soul, repine
That I have nothing, having all:
Health and myself, and love like thine,
Dearest, who shar'st my humble hall!
Nor ever be my soul a thrall
To avarice or ambition vain:
Heaven shield me from the hardened heart
That brings the softness to the brain!