I saw him across the dingy street,
A little old cobbler, lame, with a hump,
Yet his whistle came to me clear and sweet
As he stitched away at a dancing pump.
Well, some of us limp while others dance;
There’s none of life’s pleasures without alloy.
Let us thank Heaven, then, for the chance
To whistle, while mending the shoes of joy.
Some people seem to live narrow lives. Their circumstances are narrow. They are hemmed in, as it were, and it appears to them they never can make anything of themselves. In their little circumscribed environment they dream of a larger world outside, with its beauty, its opportunities, its privileges, its achievements, and they wish they could climb out of their close, cramped place, and enjoy the wider world, the freer air, the larger room for living, outside. And some young people fret in the limitations in which they find themselves.
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