# 16 My steady, quiet in-laws

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.

Daughter # 4 has been indulging her penchant for Robert Service’s poetry again. And I was particularly struck by “The Men Who Don’t Fit In”

Perhaps its because I’ve been listening to Jane Austen (“Mansfield Park” this week) while I rock the baby and/or keep the little ones in bed. (Judah is a little night owl.) Miss Austen takes a dim few of idle men!

But what comes to mind is Dickens’ novel “Bleak House” (one of my favorites!) and the contrast drawn between Esther Summerston who settles down to make the most of her unpromising circumstances and ends so very well and Richard Carstone who will never do what he can do because he’s waiting for his ship to come in …and ends very sadly.

I like that phrase in the third stanza Robert Service’s poem:

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.

That would be my husband’s parents. “The steady, quiet, plodding ones” … Their example and their loving support over the last 36 years  has enriched my life more than I can tell.

I thank God for them and their steady ways.

 

THE MEN WHO DON’T FIT IN

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.