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Compensation

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1904

Why should I keep holiday
  When other men have none?
Why but because, when these are gay,
  I sit and mourn alone?

And why, when mirth unseals all tongues,
  Should mine alone be dumb?
Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
  And now their hour is come.

Published in The Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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