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
Pippa’s Song
This little song vibrates with an optimism that embraces the whole universe. A frequent error in quoting it is the substitution of the word “well for right”.
Browning is no such shallow optimist as to believe that all is well with the world, but he does maintain that things are right with the world, for in spite of its present evils it is slowly working its way toward perfection, and in the great scheme of things it may make these evils themselves an instrument to move it toward its ultimate goal.
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his heaven
All’s right with the world.
By Robert Browning
