Life is a jest; Take the delight of it. Laughter is best; Sing through the night of it. Swiftly the tear And the hurt and the ache of it Find us down… - Edgar Guest

'Tis better to have tried in vain,
Sincerely striving for a goal,
Than to have lived upon the plain
An idle and a timid soul.<p>'Tis better to have fought and spent
Your courage, missing all applause,
Than to have lived in smug content
And never ventured for a cause.<p>For he who tries and fails may be
The founder of a better day;
Though never his the victory,
From him shall others learn the way.

They spoke it bravely, grimly, in their darkest hours of doubt;
They spoke it when their hope was low and when their strength gave out;
We heard it from the dying in those troubled days now gone,
And they breathed it as their slogan for the living: "Carry on!"<p>Now the days of strife are over, and the skies are fair again,
But those two brave words of courage on our lips should still remain;
In the trials which beset us and the cares we look upon,
To our dead we should be faithful—we have still to "carry on!"<p>"Carry on!" through storm and danger, "carry on" through dark despair,
"Carry on" through hurt and failure, "carry on" through grief and care;
'Twas the slogan they bequeathed us as they fell beside the way,
And for them and for our children, let us "carry on!" to-day.

Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more,
The factory whistles blowin' day by day,
An' men an' children hurryin' by the door,
An' street cars clangin' on their busy way.
The faces of the people seemed to be
Washed pale by tears o' grief an' strife an' care,
Till everywhere I turned to I could see
The same old gloomy pictures of despair.<p>The windows of the shops all looked the same,
Decked out with stuff their owners wished to sell;
When visitors across our doorway came
I could recite the tales they'd have to tell.
All things had lost their old-time power to please;
Dog-tired I was an' irritable, too,
An' so I traded chimney tops for trees,
An' shingled roof for open skies of blue.