Tricky Things

Habit of being failure’s disciple
Is conducive to limited success
In the vast waste that is vain ambition
Real is sublime just because it is real

There’s no trial without disappointment
That holds fool’s gold hard by the gold of truth
But how to tell the two safely apart
Except by more trials’ disappointment?

Half an idea is better than none
If it teases all the while it deceives
As a fading moon presages the new
Silver sliver that plumps itself to whole

Tricky things, feeling and thought, and the hold
They have on us to flail as frail and bold