"By an Anonymous Poet" and other ramblings

When things go wrong as they sometimes will
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill
When the funds are low, and the debts are high
You want to smile, but have to sigh
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with it's twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow--
You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
it seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup.
And he learned too late, when the
night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things go wrong that you must not quit.

I don't quite remember where and when I recited this one. Was it at the school farewell party? For my class or my seniors? Or was it on Teachers' Day? Certainly wasn't in college... or anytime after I left college. I remember I used to have a notebook full of such stuff (gimme a break, I was only a kid then!) and funny quotes.

My favourite one, and maybe Chaos remembers this too, was by Andre Agassi (apparently) - You don't win silver. You lose gold.

And from the Matrix trilogy: Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why? Why do you do it? Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception, temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself. Although... Only a human mind can invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now. You can't win, it is pointless to keep fighting.