Now, there’s that youngster on my right
Who thinks himself a poet,
And so he toils from morn to night
And vainly hopes to show it;
And there’s that dauber on my left,
Within his chamber shrinking–
He looks like one of hope bereft;
He lives on air, I’m thinking.
But me, I love the things that are,
My heart is always merry;
I laugh and tune my old guitar:
Sing ho! and hey-down-derry.
Oh, let them toil their lives away
To gild a tawdry era,
But I’ll be gay while yet I may:
Sing tira-lira-lira.
I’m sure you know that picture well,
A monk, all else unheeding,
Within a bare and gloomy cell
A musty volume reading;
While through the window you can see
In sunny glade entrancing,
With cap and bells beneath a tree
A jester dancing, dancing.
Which is the fool and which the sage?
I cannot quite discover;
But you may look in learning’s page
And I’ll be laughter’s lover.
