For that's the way of Luck

Eldorado
by Robert W. Service

I pitched my tent beneath a pine
Upon a grassy mound,
And all that summer worked my mine,
Yet never wealth I found;
Each night I dreamed of fortune dear,
of pokes of virgin gold:
Alas! what riches were so near,
The grass roots could have told.

So broke and burdened with despair,
Abandoning my "lay,"
Believing that no gold was there,
I upped and went away;
And then a Swede came to my mound;
With careless pick he struck,
And where I slept a fortune found,
For that's the way of Luck.

God save us all from sudden wealth
That makes the head to swell;
Champagne and women mined his health
And he went plumb to hell.
And me? To win my bread I drive
A heavy highway truck . . .
But he is dead and I'm alive,
- And that's the way of Luck.