Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there -- that’s disgrace.
The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;
It’s how did you fight and why?
And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could;
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?
--Edmund Vance Cooke
4 comments:
my first comment didnt show. lame.
anyway i wish you were reciting this to me as we both lay in bed and you cant see me without your glasses and your reading light is on and all you can hear from me are my profoundly mean thoughts and the tapping of my laptop keys.
ps i rly like this poem
This sounds suspiciously like something your father would embrace, along the lines of "If" and so on.
love it. love you. love my fat kid. love my skinny kid. love it.
The logic is impeccable.
The sentiment absurd.
That we can shrug off life's travails?--
The silliest thing I've heard.
That tragedies both great and small
Somehow should not be counted
Simply because our best response
Would have them all surmounted,
Seems like the kind of wishful thought
That's much admired in theory;
But not much use to the poor soul
Who's downtrodden and weary.
So carpe diem! Gird up your loins,
And give the college try!
But don't discount my mete of woe
The day that I must die.
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