When Failure?/When Success?

When Failure?/When Success?

There is the greatest practical benefit

in making a few failures early in life.

                                                         ---T.H. Huxley

How far high failure overleaps

the bounds of low success.

                                                   ---Sir Lewis Morris

How can they say my life isn't a success?

Have I not for more than sixty years got

enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

                                             ---Logan Pearsall Smith

A failure, loser/

Then breakout

To success, perhaps

A star:

So bloomin' fine

That smudgy line

That roughly slopes

Between,

And blurry, not clear cut

(At times so hard to see),

Quite as she ought

Indeed to seem ....

---------------

A star, success/

Then failure,

Sadly battered loser:

And too awfully fine

That smudgy line

That roughly slants

Between,

And muddled, not clear cut,

A blotted oozer

(At times so friggin'

Tough to see,

It then would seem

To earmarked me),

Quite as she ought

Appear, as verging seam

As in some dismal dream ....