I have known joy and woe and toil and fight
I have lived largely, I have dreamed and planned,
And Time, the sculptor, with a master hand,
Upon my face has wrought for all men’s sight
The lines and seams of Life, of growth and blight,
Of struggle and of service and command;
And now you show me This--this waxen, bland
And placid face--unlined, untroubled, white!
This is not I--this fatuous face you show
Retouched and prettified and smoothed to please,
Put back the wrinkles and the lines I know;
I have spent blood and brain achieving these,
Out of the pain, the sorrow and the wrack,
They are my scars of battle--PUT THEM BACK!
_Harper’s Weekly_ _Berton Braley_