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Man’s Folly

Edward S. Sorenson

* * * * * *
Earth’s highest station ends in “Here he lies.”
* * * * * *

‘Tis a rugged, a thorny pathway
That stretches from cradle to grave,
Over which the wanderer passes
As a ship across the wave;
And he can never return nor anchor
Once departed from “Cradle Bay,”
But must journey ever onward
Right over the stormy way.

When, attaining to years of discretion,
When the careless period doth wane.
His soul becomes filled with ambition
That prompts him some end to gain.
He enters this ocean of human life,
With the lust of a human shark,
Ignoring that where there is no contention
So peacefully rides the bark.

And the life that might have been happy
Is filled with trouble and care,
From morning till night he is hurried,
And hasn’t an hour to spare;
Ever fighting among his fellows,
E’er striving for more and more,
And wrecking his life in his efforts
To add to his hoarded store.

What avail is this grasping and struggling
That we notice thus day by day,
In pastoral climes, in the dense-packed cities,
In the battlefield’s bloody fray,
In every land, and ‘mong every nation,
For honour and wealth and fame,
When in the end, the proudest of Victors
Can only bequeath the name?

The deed that a man may accomplish,
However esteemed to day,
Becomes but a trifle in history
When at last he passes away—
To a rest that perhaps is no sounder
In his narrow bed and deep
Than the thousands before him departed,
Who there together sleep.

And those few who were ever contented
With just enough in their modest bowers,
And across Life’s stormy pathway
Enjoyed the bright sunlit hours,
Will be as rich in the world hereafter
As those who struggled for gain—
In the bright world that levels all stations,
And where happiness alone doth reign.

Edward S. Sorenson, Casino

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