Classic Poem

A SONNET ,

How widely different is life's varied way,
One loans on silken sofas from the birth,
Another, toiling through its trying day,
Is, by incessant burdens, press'd to earth.

Wealth gaily rolls on gaudy rapid wheels,
Or lightly ambles on the graceful steed;
And flashing on the broad-way, seldom feels,
What humbler folk, in narrower paths, may need.

The Proud thus passing, with averted eyes,
May read where Inspiration's precepts glow,
That these are sometimes creeping to the skies,
While guilty greatness gallops but to woe.

And, patient toiler, loaded and depress'd,
Content may be an inmate in thy breast!