The Wisdom of Folly
“Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.”
Shakespeare’s lilting stanza conveys a great truth—the power of cheerfulness to give impetus and endurance. The a at the end of lines is merely an addition in singing; the word hent means take.
The cynics say that every rose
Is guarded by a thorn which grows
To spoil our posies;
But I no pleasure therefore lack;
I keep my hands behind my back
When smelling roses.
Though outwardly a gloomy shroud
The inner half of every cloud
Is bright and shining:
I therefore turn my clouds about,
And always wear them inside out
To show the lining.
My modus operandi this—
To take no heed of what’s amiss;
And not a bad one;
Because, as Shakespeare used to say,
A merry heart goes twice the way
That tires a sad one.
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler. (The Honorable Mrs. Alfred Felkin.)
From “Verses Wise and Otherwise.”