Or was it unrequited love,
And did she jilt you for another?
Or murmur, gently as a dove,
"I look upon you as a brother"?
Or are you married to a wife
Whose tongue and temper drove you frantic,
And made you seek a quiet life
Amid the storms of the Atlantic?
Or happiness perhaps you find
Rests on a philosophic basis,
And think, with stoics, that the mind
The sum of human life embraces,
And all the joys that men surround
Are hostages to fortune given;
So, like Diogenes, you found
A tub is all you need to live in.
Ah! tranquil hermit of the sea—
A change of wind your only sorrow,
A gale your only enemy;
No wife to spend, nor friend to borrow;
The waves your only "bull and bear,"
And reckonings your only losses;—
What wonder that you do not care
For life's poor game of noughts and crosses?
"Rip van Winkle."
