In the Harness

“When I get rich I am going to retire,”

     Said the man at the prime of life;

And he ground each day in the same old way,

     Knee deep in commercial strife.

“I’m not going to wait till I get old,

     I shall have a few years of rest”;

And he plugged along with the toiling thing

     In the way which he thought was best.

When he rolled up a thousand he thought was small,

     So he labored to make it two;

And when he reached four he wanted still more,

     As every man’s sure to do.

And he struggled and worked to make it ten –

     When he got it it still seemed small;

For his point of view it had altered, too,

     And his ten wouldn’t do at all.

And the white crept o’er his wrinkled brow,

     And a stoop crept into his frame;

“I’ll stay a year more” – he had said it before –

     “And then I’ll get out of the game.”

But the years they came and the years they went,

     And the pile grew yellow and great;

And the sum he prized was at last realized,

     But the rest didn’t come till too late.

April 27, ‘10