Page:Poems (Fields)-1.djvu/105

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COMMERCE.
89
What though he linger, with a wistful eye,Upon the dial as the sun mounts high;Impatient hoy! the man will soon complain,Too swift the moments for his hours of gain;Too fleetly pass the sands of life away,And death may claim him as a miser, gray.
 Panting with joy to leave his native vale,He leaps unarmed where scarce a veteran's mailWould shield from sin in all its cunning forms,Or keep secure where vice in legions swarms;Yet leaves he not his peaceful home unwarned,Though many an earnest prayer perchance is scorned.
 In fashion now, our hero strives to reign,Sports the last hat, the latest Paris cane;Hangs out long clusters of superfluous hair,And apes Lord Byron with his throat all bare;Makes one, perhaps, of that queer tribe of men,Who play, in dress, part fool, part Saracen.
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