Forever, insatiate longing and regret. 
Behold the brute’s unerring instinct guides
True as the pole-star, while man’s reason leads
How oft to quicksands and the hidden reefs! 
Contented brute, his daily wants how few! 
And these by Nature’s mother-hand supplied. 
Man’s wants unnumbered and unsatisfied,
And multiplied at every onward step—­
Insatiate as the cavernous maw of time. 
His real wants how simple and how few! 
Behold the kine in yonder pasture-field
Cropping the clover, or in rest reclined,
Chewing meek-eyed the cud of sweet content. 
Ambition plagues them not, nor hope, nor fear;
No demons fright them and no cruel creeds;
No pangs of disappointment or remorse. 
See man the picture of perpetual want,
The prototype of all disquietude;
Full of trouble, yet ever seeking more;
Between the upper and the nether stone
Ground and forever in the mill of fate. 
Nature and art combine to clothe his form,
To feed his fancy and to fill his maw;
And yet the more they give the more he craves. 
Give him the gold of Ophir, still he delves;
Give him the land, and he demands the sea;
Give him the earth—­he reaches for the stars. 
Doomed by his fate to scorn the good he has
And grasp at fancied good beyond his reach,
He seeks for silver in the distant hills
While in the sand gold glitters at his feet.

O man, thy wisdom is but folly still;
Wiser the brute and full of sweet content. 
The wit and wisdom of five thousand years—­What
are they but the husks we feed upon,
While beast and bird devour the golden grain? 
Lo for the brutes dame Nature sows and tills;
For them the Tuba-tree of Paradise
Bends with its bounties free and manifold;
For them the fabled fountain Salsabil,
Gushes pure wine that sparkles as it runs,
And fair Al Cawthar flows with creamy milk. 
But man, forever doomed to toil and sweat,
Digs the hard earth and casts his seeds therein,
And hopes the harvest;—­how oft he hopes in vain! 
Weeds choke, winds blast, and myriad pests devour,
The hot sun withers and the floods destroy. 
Unceasing labor, vigilance and care
Reward him here and there with bounteous store. 
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.