“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.”
–GRANTLAND RICE
Excerpt from “It Can Be Done”
by Scott Brown
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