"Might Have Been"

Here's to "The days that might have been";
Here's to "The life I might have led";
The fame I might have gathered in--
The glory ways I might have sped.
Great "Might Have Been," I drink to you
Upon a throne where thousands hail--
And then--there looms another view--
I also "might"ve been" in jail.

O "Land of Might Have Been," we turn
With aching hearts to where you wait;
Where crimson fires of glory burn,
And laurel crowns the guarding gate;
We may not see across your fields
The sightless skulls that knew their woe--
The broken spears--the shattered shields--
That "might have been" as truly so.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen"--
So wails the poet in his pain--
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
And world-wide runs the dull refrain.
The saddest? Yes--but in the jar
This thought brings to me with its curse,
I sometimes think the gladdest are
"It might have been a blamed sight worse."