The Tangled Skein
William Schwenck Gilbert 1836 – 1911
Try we life-long, we can never
Straighten out life's tangled skein,
Why should we, in vain endeavour,
Guess and guess and guess again?
Life's a pudding full of plums
Care's a canker that benumbs.
Wherefore waste our elocution
On impossible solution?
Life's a pleasant institution,
Let us take it as it comes!
Set aside the dull enigma,
We shall guess it all too soon;
Failure brings no kind of stigma -
Dance we to another tune!
String the lyre and fill the cup,
Lest on sorrow we should sup;
Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle,
Hands across and down the middle -
Life's perhaps the only riddle
That we shrink from giving up!
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 10, 2023
- 36 sec read
- 39 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AXAXBBCCCB DEDEFFGGGF |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 610 |
Words | 115 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 10 |
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"The Tangled Skein" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/41336/the-tangled-skein>.
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