Had man the blessed wisdom of content,
Happy were he--as wise Horatius sung--
To whom God gives enough with sparing hand.
Of all the crops by sighing mortals sown,
And watered with man's sweat and woman's tears,
There is but only one that never fails
In drouth or flood, on fat or flinty soil,
On Nilus' banks or Scandia's stony hills--
The plenteous, never-stinted crop of fools.
So hath it been since erst aspiring man
Broke from the brute and plucked the fatal tree,
And will be till eternity grows gray.
Princes and parasites comprise mankind:
To one wise prince a million parasites;
The most uncommon thing is common-sense;
A truly wise man is a freak of nature.
The herd are parasites of parasites
That blindly follow priest or demagogue,
Himself blind leader of the blind. The wise
Weigh words, but by the yard fools measure them.
The wise beginneth at the end; the fool
Ends at the beginning, or begins anew:
Aye, every ditch is full of after-wit.
Folly sows broad cast; Wisdom gathers in,
And so the wise man fattens on the fool,
And from the follies of the foolish learns
Wisdom to guide himself and bridle them.
"To-morrow I made my fortune," cries the fool,
"To-day I'll spend it.
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