Poems

by John Hay

True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table:
Luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home.

XVI.

Pleasant enough it is to hear the world speak of your virtues;
But in your secret heart 't is of your faults you are proud.

XVII.

Try not to beat back the current, yet be not drowned in its waters;
Speak with the speech of the world, think with the thoughts of the few.

XVIII.

Make all good men your well-wishers, and then, in the years' steady sifting,
Some of them turn into friends. Friends are the sunshine of life.

Regardant

As I lay at your feet that afternoon,
Little we spoke,—you sat and mused,
Humming a sweet old-fashioned tune,

And I worshipped you, with a sense confused
Of the good time gone and the bad on the way,
While my hungry eyes your face perused