The little it takes to make life bright,
     If we open our eyes to get it!
And the trifle which makes it black as night,
     If we close our lids and let it!
Behold, as the world goes whirling by,
It is gloomy, or glad, as it fits your eye.

As it fits your eye, and I mean by that
     You find what you look for mostly;
You can feed your happiness full and fat,
     You can make your miseries ghostly,
Or you can forget every joy you own
By coveting something beyond your zone.

In the storms of life we can fret the eye
     Where the guttering mud is drifted,
Or we can look to the world-wide sky
     Where the Artist’s scenes are shifted.
Puddles are oceans in miniatures,
Or merely puddles; the choice is yours.

We can strip our niggardly souls so bare
     That we haggle a penny between us;
Or we can be rich in a common share
     Of the Pleiades and Venus.
You can lift your soul to its outermost look,
Or can keep it packed in a pockebook.

We may follow a phantom the arid miles
     To a mountain of cankered treasure,
Or we can find, in a baby’s smiles,
     The pulse of a living pleasure.
We may drink of the sea until we burst,
While the trickling spring woud have quenched our
     thirst.

From Impertinent Poems (Dodge Publishing Company, 1903).
This poem is in the public domain.