If I must have an ill, may it be real, That I may meet it eye to eye and fight, And wheresoever it may strength reveal Get after it with all my main and might. The woe that but impends and wears the mind With worry deep and most vexatious care, Is harder fighting than the realler kind, For when you come to strikeโit isn't there!
John Kendrick BangsI like the man who takes the stones Upon his rocky road With smiling lips instead of groans, Whate'er his heavy load Who seizes each as on he goes, And neatly crumbles it, And turns his share of pebbly woes To stores of inner grit.
John Kendrick BangsA nasty day! A nasty day! 'Twas thus I heard a critic say Because the skies were bleak and grayโ And yet it somehow seemed to me The day was all that it should be. I looked it very closely o'er; Its hours still were twenty-four, With sixty minutes eachโno lessโ For deeds of good and helpfulness; And every second full of chance To give the day significance; And every hour full of growth For everybody but the slothโ I couldn't see it quite that way, For though the skies were bleak and gray The day itself, it seemed to me, Was all a day could rightly be.
John Kendrick Bangs