Hard Luck
Edgar Albert Guest 1881 (Birmingham) – 1959 (Detroit, Michigan)
Ain't no use as I can see
In sittin' underneath a tree
An' growlin' that your luck is bad,
An' that your life is extry sad;
Your life ain't sadder than your neighbor's
Nor any harder are your labors;
It rains on him the same as you,
An' he has work he hates to do;
An' he gits tired an' he gits cross,
An' he has trouble with the boss;
You take his whole life, through an' through,
Why, he's no better off than you.
If whinin' brushed the clouds away
I wouldn't have a word to say;
If it made good friends out o' foes
I'd whine a bit, too, I suppose;
But when I look around an' see
A lot o' men resemblin' me,
An' see 'em sad, an' see 'em gay
With work t' do most every day,
Some full o' fun, some bent with care,
Some havin' troubles hard to bear,
I reckon, as I count my woes,
They're 'bout what everybody knows.
The day I find a man who'll say
He's never known a rainy day,
Who'll raise his right hand up an' swear
In forty years he's had no care,
Has never had a single blow,
An' never known one touch o' woe,
Has never seen a loved one die,
Has never wept or heaved a sigh,
Has never had a plan go wrong,
But allas laughed his way along;
Then I'll sit down an' start to whine
That all the hard luck here is mine.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 124 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABBCCDDXXDD EEFFAAEEGGFF EEGGHHIIJJKK |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,269 |
Words | 254 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12, 12 |
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"Hard Luck" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/8398/hard-luck>.
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