| Harriet Monroe, ed. (18601936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 191222. | | | | The Fool | | By Horace Holley |
| | | HE was an angel luckless to be born | |
| Into our darker world and dimmer plan. | |
| Although he wore the body of a man | |
| It looked like clothes at second hand, so worn | |
| That worldlier people pushed him by in scorn. | 5 |
| Patient, he set his clock as our clocks ran | |
| And faithfully each day its task began | |
| Night found him still beginning as at morn. | |
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| He lost his job. No foreman could forgive | |
| The hand that built for dream and not for pay. | 10 |
| Try as he might, he came at last to naught | |
| A lonely statue crumbling day by day; | |
| Which somehow woke an echo in our thought | |
| Of life forgotten in the greed to live. | | | | |
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