p. 15 | The Man Who Didn’t Succeed by Peter Reed

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 19, 1914

The Man Who Didn’t Succeed

By Peter Reed

THEY sing of the men who build the mills And girdle the earth with steel, Who fill the hour and wield the power That molds the public weal. Honor to them that in honor do The work that the world must need; And yet in chief I hold a brief For the man who didn’t succeed.

’Tis not to excuse the indolent, No plea for the down and out, No jealous rage at what this age And its leaders are about; Merely to ask in a casual way Of those who chance to read, For fairer view, and kinder, too, Of the man who didn’t succeed.

His house is small, his table light; His family must endure The snubs and sneers of the buccaneers Whose debts fall on the poor. Yet his is a home, and no hotel; His wife is a wife indeed; There’s nothing above his children’s love, To the man who didn’t succeed.

Admitting it’s true that he did not make The most of his talents ten, He won no pelf nor raised himself At the cost of his fellow men. His hands are clean, his heart is white, His honor has been his creed. Now who are we to say that he Is the man who didn’t succeed?

— Peter Reed, in the New York Sun.