Commonplace Book

Several of my friends are going through bad places in their lives right now and I got to thinking that when I'm in the middle of a black depression this is the poem that, in a very strange way, makes me feel a little bit better. It reminds me, not so much that things have started to improve, but that eventually they will - there will always be moments of walking down the street in a spring evening smelling bread baking, and that's a comforting thought. So for anyone who reads this who is stuck in a dark state of mind that they can't see their way out of, er, hang in there.

A Ballade of Suicide
The gallows in my garden, people say,
     Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
     As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
     But just as all the neighbours--on the wall--
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
     The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay--
     My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall--
I see a little cloud all pink and grey--
     Perhaps the rector's mother will not call--
     I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way--
     I never read the works of Juvenal--
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;
     The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
     And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
     Rationalists are growing rational--
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
     So secret that the very sky seems small--
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

          ENVOI
     Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
     Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

G.K. Chesterton