Happiness and Joy

How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, Our own felicity we make or find.

Blesses his stars and thinks it luxury.

And kind as kings upon their coronation day.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv’d today.

Well then; I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne’er agree; The very honey of all earthly joy Does of all meats the soonest cloy, And they (methinks) deserve my pity, Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd, and buzz and murmurings, Of this great hive, the city.

The sum of earthly bliss.

And feel that I am happier than I know.

My latest found, Heaven’s last, best gift, my ever new delight!

A heaven on earth.

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With Joy and Love triumphing.

Such sober certainty of waking bliss.

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastic round.

Midnight shout and revelry, Tipsy dance and jollity.

Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain’d Eurydice. These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee, I mean to live.

Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly without father bred!

And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry, Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson’s learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the checkered shade. And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.

Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free.

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

Sport, that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter, holding both his sides. Come, and trip it, as you go, On the light fantastic toe.

So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, To taste whole joys.

Ah cannot we As well as cocks and lions jocund be, After such pleasures?

’Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk’d up in a glist’ring grief And wear a golden sorrow.