Contentment is a sleepy thing! If it in death alone must die; A quiet mind is worse than poverty! Unless it from enjoyment spring! That's blessedness alone that makes a king! Wherein the joys and treasures are so great, They all the powers of the soul employ, And fill it with a work complete, While it doth all enjoy. True joys alone contentment do inspire, Enrich content, and make our courage higher. Content alone's a dead and silent stone: The real life of bliss Is glory reigning in a throne, Where all enjoyment is. The soul of man is so inclin'd to see, Without his treasures no man's soul can be, Nor rest content uncrown'd! Desire and love Must in the height of all their rapture move, Where there is true felicity. Employment is the very life and ground Of life itself; whose pleasant motion is The form of bliss: All blessedness a life with glory crown'd. Life! Life is all: in its most full extent Stretch'd out to all things, and with all content! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FORBIDDEN FRUIT: 2 by EMILY DICKINSON THE TRAGEDY OF VALENTINIAN: SPRING by JOHN FLETCHER THE MAY MAGNIFICAT by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS TO THE DRIVING CLOUD by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW LOVE AND AGE by THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK WHAT THE BIRDS SAID by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER IN ENVY OF COWS by JOSEPH AUSLANDER |