"What is the use of trying?
I never can learn to fly,
See how the lark goes floating
Up to the sunlit sky;
He never failed as I have,
See how he flies at ease,
Light as a down of thistle
Tossed on the tremulous breeze.
I have been foolishly trying,
Thinking I, too, might rise,
I'll stay down here in the hedges,
And leave to the lark the skies."
So he stayed in the crowded hedges,
And lived through the summer long,
Only a common sparrow—
One of a common throng.
"What is the use of trying?
Pouring o'er book and slate,
I fail, and shall keep on failing,
For men are created great.
'Tis folly to think that study
For so many hours a day
Is going to make out of boys and girls,
Wise women and men alway.
So what is the use of trying?
A common lot shall be mine;
Why muddle my brain with study?
I never was meant to shine;"
So away in the closet cupboard
The books kept gathering dust,
And the mind they were meant to nourish
Was buried and lost in rust.
So the hedges go gathering sparrows,
And the larks still mount to the sky,
And out from the crowded byways
Few souls gain the mountains high.
Have courage and keep on trying,
Though a sparrow, a lark cannot be,
The highways that lead to the Pisgahs
Are open to you and to me.