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Riches

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1904

Have ye seen the caterpillar
  Foully warking in his nest?
’T is the poor man getting siller,
  Without cleanness, without rest.

Have ye seen the butterfly
  In braw claithing drest?
’T is the poor man gotten rich,
  In rings and painted vest.

The poor man crawls in web of rags
  And sore bested with woes.
But when he flees on riches’ wings,
  He laugheth at his foes.

Published in The Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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