CONTENTMENT. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. "Man wants but little here below." L ITTLE I ask; my wants are few; (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own ;- Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten; If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice; - Give me a mortgage here and there, Some good bank-stock, · some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share, I only ask that Fortune send A little more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; My dames should dress in cheap attire ; (Good, heavy silks are never dear ;) — I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true Cashmere, – Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; two, forty-five An easy gait Suits me; I do not care ; Perhaps, for just a single spurt, Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four, I love so much their style and tone, One Turner, and no more, (A landscape, foreground golden dirt, — The sunshine painted with a squirt.) Of books but few, some fifty score |