| |
| O VANITY of vanities! | |
| How wayward the decrees of Fate are; | |
| How very weak the very wise, | |
| How very small the very great are! | |
| |
| What mean these stale moralities, | 5 |
| Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble? | |
| Why rail against the great and wise, | |
| And tire us with your ceaseless grumble? | |
| |
| Pray choose us out another text, | |
| O man morose and narrow-minded! | 10 |
| Come turn the page—I read the next, | |
| And then the next, and still I find it. | |
| |
| Read here how Wealth aside was thrust, | |
| And Folly set in place exalted; | |
| How Princes footed in the dust, | 15 |
| While lackeys in the saddle vaulted. | |
| |
| Though thrice a thousand years are past. | |
| Since David’s son, the sad and splendid, | |
| The weary King Ecclesiast, | |
| Upon his awful tablets penned it,— | 20 |
| |
| Methinks the text is never stale, | |
| And life is every day renewing | |
| Fresh comments on the old old tale | |
| Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin. | |
| |
| Hark to the Preacher, preaching still; | 25 |
| He lifts his voice and cries his sermon, | |
| Here at St. Peter’s on Cornhill, | |
| As yonder on the Mount of Hermon: | |
| |
| For you and me to heart to take | |
| (O dear beloved brother readers) | 30 |
| To-day as when the good King spake | |
| Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars. | |
| |
