I
Walk up! walk up! This way to see the world!
Scant time allowed, must make the best of it:
Seventy years or so: your hair’ll be curled
Before that, though, with two or three sights fit
To set your eyes wide open—if you’ve wit,
That is to say, to win in the great strife
For bare existence ’gainst each brother chit—
To keep one eye upon the slide of life,
As ’twere an instant, ere death hood you with his coif.