A nasty day! A nasty day!
'Twas thus I heard a critic say
Because the skies were bleak and gray—
And yet it somehow seemed to me
The day was all that it should be.
I looked it very closely o'er;
Its hours still were twenty-four,
With sixty minutes each—no less—
For deeds of good and helpfulness;
And every second full of chance
To give the day significance;
And every hour full of growth
For everybody but the sloth—
I couldn't see it quite that way,
For though the skies were bleak and gray
The day itself, it seemed to me,
Was all a day could rightly be.
~John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), "A Protest" (February Fourteenth), The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse For Every Day, 1920