If Knocking Paid

If Knocking Paid
1609

– If knocking paid, how easily
We might win freedom from our earest
The problems that are hard for me
Would soon be trivial affairs;
I’d live in luxury and own
An auto of the highest grade;
With all my troubles overthrown,
I’d shout for joy If knocking paid

Of all the things that people do
I trow the easiest by far
Is finding that the world’s askew,
And knocking at the things that are
The lazy man who turns his gaze
A thousand times upon the clock,
And dawdles meanly through the days,
Is never too inert to knock

The one who labors all day long
With brawny arms and all his might
Finds that so very much is wrong
And, oh! so little that is right!
If knocking paid, his wife could wear
Fine gems upon her soft, white hands,
And there would be a palace where
His poor, unpainted cottage stands,

Alas! that what is must be so,
That all things are not otherwiset
This world is but a vale of woe,
Where man must languish till he dies,
The easy things are not the kind
That cause the cares we bear to fade,
I do not doubt that we should find
It hard to knock if knockig paid
-Chicago Record-Herald