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A poem by W. S. Gilbert

The Tangled Skein

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Title:     The Tangled Skein
Author: W. S. Gilbert [More Titles by Gilbert]

Try we life long, we can never
Straighten out life's tangled skein,
Why should we, in vain endeavor,
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!


[The end]
W. S. Gilbert's poem: Tangled Skein

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