The Miser
A FELLOW all his life lived hoarding gold,
And, dying, hoarded left it. And behold,
One night his son saw peering through the house
A man, with yet the semblance of a mouse,
Watching a crevice in the wall, and cried,
“My father?” “Yes,” the Mussulman replied,
“Thy father!” “But why watching thus?” “For fear
Lest any smell my treasure buried here.”
“But wherefore, sir, so metamousified?”
“Because, my son, such is the true outside
Of the inner soul by which I lived and died.”
Edward Fitzgerald.