“’Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.”
One great amusement of the household in the Castle of Indolence, on the testimony of its poet-laureate, was,
“In a huge crystal magic globe to spy,
Still as you turned it, all things that do pass
Upon this ant-hill earth; where constantly
Of idly busy men the restless fry