There Will Always be Something to Do
An old lady, famous for her ability to find in other people traits that she could commend, was challenged to say a good word for the devil. After a moment’s hesitation she answered, “You must at least give him credit for being industrious.” Perhaps it is this superactivity of Satan that causes beings less wickedly inclined to have such scope for the exercise of their qualities. Certain it is that nobody need hang back from want of something to do, to promote, to assail, to protect, to endure, or to sympathize with.
There will always be something to do, my boy;
There will always be wrongs to right;
There will always be need for a manly breed
And men unafraid to fight.
There will always be honor to guard, my boy;
There will always be hills to climb,
And tasks to do, and battles new
From now till the end of time.
There will always be dangers to face, my boy;
There will always be goals to take;
Men shall be tried, when the roads divide,
And proved by the choice they make.
There will always be burdens to bear, my boy;
There will always be need to pray;
There will always be tears through the future years,
As loved ones are borne away.
There will always be God to serve, my boy,
And always the Flag above;
They shall call to you until life is through
For courage and strength and love.
So these are things that I dream, my boy,
And have dreamed since your life began:
That whatever befalls, when the old world calls,
It shall find you a sturdy man.
By Edgar A. Guest, from “The Path to Home”
Might Have Been - from The Sportlight
“Yes, it’s pretty hard,” the optimistic old woman admitted. “I have to get along with only two teeth, one in the upper jaw and one in the lower - but thank God, they meet.”
Here’s to “The days that might have been”;
Here’s to “The life I might have led”;
The fame I might have gathered in
The glory ways I might have sped.
Great “Might Have Been,” I drink to you
Upon a throne where thousands hail
And then, there looms another view
I also “might have been” in jail.
O “Land of Might Have Been,” we turn
With aching hearts to where you wait;
Where crimson fires of glory burn,
And laurel crowns the guarding gate;
We may not see across your fields
The sightless skulls that knew their woe
The broken spears, the shattered shields
That “might have been” as truly so.
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen”
So wails the poet in his pain
The saddest are, “It might have been,”
And world-wide runs the dull refrain.
The saddest? Yes, but in the jar
This thought brings to me with its curse,
I sometimes think the gladdest are
“It might have been a blamed sight worse.”
By Grantland Rice
Can You Sing a Song?
Nothing lifts the spirit more than a song, especially the inward song of a worker who can sound it alike at the beginning of his task, in the heat of midday, and in the weariness and cool of the evening.
Can you sing a song to greet the sun,
Can you cheerily tackle the work to be done,
Can you vision it finished when only begun,
Can you sing a song?
Can you sing a song when the day’s half through,
When even the thought of the rest wearies you,
With so little done and so much to do,
Can you sing a song?
Can you sing a song at the close of the day,
When weary and tired, the work’s put away,
With the joy that it’s done the best of the pay,
Can you sing a song?
By Joseph Morris
