Ne’er quit your gain for fiercest heat or cold: 
Fire, ocean, sword, defying all, you strive
To make yourself the richest man alive. 
Yet where’s the profit, if you hide by stealth
In pit or cavern your enormous wealth? 
“Why, once break in upon it, friend, you know,
And, dwindling piece by piece, the whole will go.” 
But, if ’tis still unbroken, what delight
Can all that treasure give to mortal wight? 
Say, you’ve a million quarters on your floor: 
Your stomach is like mine:  it holds no more: 
Just as the slave who ’neath the bread-bag sweats
No larger ration than his fellows gets. 
What matters it to reasonable men
Whether they plough a hundred fields or ten? 
“But there’s a pleasure, spite of all you say,
In a large heap from which to take away.” 
If both contain the modicum we lack,
Why should your barn be better than my sack? 
You want a draught of water:  a mere urn,
Perchance a goblet, well would serve your turn: 
You say, “The stream looks scanty at its head;
I’ll take my quantum where ’tis broad instead.” 
But what befalls the wight who yearns for more
Than Nature bids him? down the waters pour,
And whelm him, bank and all; while he whose greed
Is kept in check, proportioned to his need,
He neither draws his water mixed with mud,
Nor leaves his life behind him in the flood.

But there’s a class of persons, led astray
By false desires, and this is what they say: 
“You cannot have enough:  what you possess,
That makes your value, be it more or less.” 
What answer would you make to such as these? 
Why, let them hug their misery if they please,
Like the Athenian miser, who was wont
To meet men’s curses with a hero’s front: 
“Folks hiss me,” said he, “but myself I clap
When I tell o’er my treasures on my lap.” 
So Tantalus catches at the waves that fly
His thirsty palate—­Laughing, are you? why? 
Change but the name, of you the tale is told: 
You sleep, mouth open, on your hoarded gold;
Gold that you treat as sacred, dare not use,
In fact, that charms you as a picture does. 
Come, will you hear what wealth can fairly do? 
’Twill buy you bread, and vegetables too,
And wine, a good pint measure:  add to this
Such needful things as flesh and blood would miss. 
But to go mad with watching, nights and days
To stand in dread of thieves, fires, runaways
Who filch and fly,—­in these if wealth consist,
Let me rank lowest on the paupers’ list.

“But if you suffer from a chill attack,
Or other chance should lay you on your back,
You then have one who’ll sit by your bed-side,
Will see the needful remedies applied,
And call in a physician, to restore
Your health, and give you to your friends once more.” 
Nor wife nor son desires your welfare:  all
Detest you, neighbours, gossips, great and small. 
What marvel if, when wealth’s your one concern,
None offers you the love you never earn? 
Nay, would you win the kinsmen Nature sends
Made ready to your hand, and keep them friends,
’Twere but lost labour, as if one should train
A donkey for the course by bit and rein.