The light and trivial fool, the brainless fop;
The staid and sober priest and minister;
And she who worshiped at proud fashion's shrine;
The mental giant, serious and sad;
The thoughtful student and philosopher;
And some of intellect diminutive;
The man of letters, with abstracted mien,
And he whose every thought was on the toil
Which made his bare existence possible;
The blushing maiden, pure and innocent;
The stately grandam, dignified and gray;
The matron, with the babe upon her breast;
The silly superannuated flirt,
Who nursed her waning beauty day by day,
And still essayed to act the role of youth;
The gay coquette and belle of other days,
Who in life's morning, with disdainful laugh,
Had quaffed the cup of pleasure to its dregs,
And now, grown old, must pay the penalty
In wrinkles and uncourted loneliness;
The widow, who, but newly desolate,
Would grasp a hand, then start to find it gone;
The spendthrift and the sordid usurer,
Who knew no sentiment save lust for gold;
The bloated drunkard, sinking 'neath the weight
Of wassail inclination dissolute;
The youth, who, following his baleful steps,
Reeled for the first time from intemperance;
And she who had forgot her covenant,
In brazen infamy and unwept shame;--
The good, the bad, the impious and unjust,
The energetic and the indolent,
The adolescent and the venerable,
Passed by, pursuant of their various ways.
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