In doing some research for the UoE, we came across this gem.

Life’s Paradoxes

P. Luftig (pseud.), 1900

STRANGE! the man who works the hardest never makes a pile of pelf,
And the flirt who flirts most madly sometimes falls in love herself;
Strange! the bogus banks have buildings in the very finest style,
And the simpler the Celestial looks the deeper is his guile;
And the wight who wades in wickedness feels not the direst woes,
And the man who drinks the deepest doesn’t have the reddest nose.

Strange! that when the man who owes us leaves, we’re all with anguish torn,
But when the man who pays departs there’s not a soul to mourn;
Strange! the rooster on the steeple, though he’s only made of tin,
Is more famous than the live one with his merry morning din;
And the fool who boasts a title (like the steeple-cock on high)
Is looked up to and respected when a sage is hustled by.

Strange! the man who stoops the lowest nearly always rises high,
And the parson says we only live, to learn the way to die;
Strange! we hail the badge of slav’ry as the banner of the free,
And we nail the thieves and prophets side by side upon the tree;
Strange! the heathen throng the thickest where the clergy tithe the sod,
And a thousand temples rise to Man for one that’s built to God.

   P. LUFTIG.

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