C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

A Winter’s Tale

From ‘The Croakers’

“A merry heart goes all the way,
A sad one tires in a mile-a.”
—WINTER’S TALE.

THE MAN who frets at worldly strife

Grows sallow, sour, and thin;

Give us the lad whose happy life

Is one perpetual grin:

He, Midas-like, turns all to gold;

He smiles when others sigh;

Enjoys alike the hot and cold,

And laughs through wet and dry.

There’s fun in everything we meet;

The greatest, worst, and best

Existence is a merry treat,

And every speech a jest:

Be ’t ours to watch the crowds that pass

Where mirth’s gay banner waves;

To show fools through a quizzing glass,

And bastinade the knaves.

The serious world will scold and ban,

In clamor loud and hard,

To hear Meigs called a Congressman,

And Paulding called a bard:

But come what may, the man’s in luck

Who turns it all to glee,

And laughing, cries with honest Puck,

“Good Lord! what fools ye be!”