To a Shropshire Lad Disheartened

Terence, this is stupid stuff: no beer here, just entropy. I put a trochee in the second foot of the first line of the fourth stanza for the harshness of it. I also meant the double plural in the fi

The trouble started on the day

After the day before.

Youth and hope and love decay,

And regret won’t restore.

It seems this old and weary world

Holds much more bad than good.

I’d have assayed, but I was hurled

In this life before I could.

A world of cloud and bitterness,

A life of scrape and thorn,

So who would ever acquiesce

Ever to be born?

Because briars outnumber flowers

By ten to one at least,

Weakness humbles mighty powers.

Famine goes before the feast.

But feasts are more than fillings ups,

And hunger’s just a pinch.

And emptiness can’t stopper cups,

And straitening can’t cinch.

Bounty and joy are plenitude,

And destitution lack,

So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,

No loss can take it back.

A single flower fortifies

To brush away the burs.

Striving wins because it tries.

Forlorn despairing errs.