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Title: The Bubble-Flies
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke [
More Titles by Cooke]
Let me read a homily
Concerning an anomaly
I view
In you.
Whatever you are striving for,
Whatever you are driving for,
'T is not alone because you crave
To be successful that you slave
To swim upon the topmost wave.
You care less what your station is,
But more what your relation is.
To be a bit above the rest!
To be upon, or of, the crest!
Ah! that is where the trouble lies
Which stirs you little bubble-flies.
(I sneer these sneers, but just the same
I keep my fingers in the game.)
See! you have eat-and-drinkables
And portables and thinkables
And yet
You fret.
For what? Let's reach the heart of you
And see the funny part of you.
For what? I find the soul and seed
Of it is not your lack or need,
Or even merely vulgar greed.
Gold? You may have a store of it,
But someone else has more of it.
Fame? Pretty things are said of you,
But--some one is ahead of you.
Place? You disprize your easy one
For some one's high and breezy one.
(I smile these smiles to soothe my soul,
But squint one eye upon the goal.)
Tell me! what's your capacity
Compared to your voracity?
I guess
'T is less.
And so I strike these attitudes
And tender you these platitudes;--
Not wishing wealth, or spurning it,
Not hoarding it, or burning it
Is equal to the earning it.
Life's race is in the riding it,
Not in the word deciding it.
And after all is said and uttered
The keenest taste is bread-and-buttered.
(And yet--and yet--my palate aches
For pallid pie and pasty cakes!)
[The end]
Edmund Vance Cooke's poem: Bubble-Flies
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