High Ground After Long Service

Wealth and rank are credited to the favor of heaven, and the second line asks why anyone should agonize over them. Marks of progress are expected on the way forward. Long use, which we read as long service, ends with the person looking down from a height.

Kichi, Good fortune, is printed over this lot in the book, and the poem's calm agrees with it. The height in the final line arrives through patience, with no scramble shown.

Put in present-day terms, the poem contrasts anxious effort with steady service over many years. It is worth asking what part of your effort goes into the work and what part into fretting about its reward.