YOU AND ME AND P.B. SHELLEY

by Ogden Nash

What is life? Life is stepping down a step or sitting in a chair,
And it isn't there.
Life is not having been told the man has just waxed the
floor,
It is pulling doors marked PUSH and pushing doors marked
PULL and not noticing notices which say PLEASE USE
OTHER DOOR.
It is when you diagnose a sore throat as an unprepared
geopgraphy lesson and send your child weeping to school
only to be returned an hour later covered with spots that
are indubitably genuine,
It is a concert with a trombone soloist filling in for Yehudi
Menuhin.
Were it not for frustration and humiliation
I suppose the human race would get ideas above its station.
Somebody once described Shelley as a beautiful and ineffective
angel beating his luminous wings against the
void in vain,
Which is certainly describing with might and main,
But probably means that we are all brothers under our pelts,
And Shelley went around pulling doors marked PUSH and
pushing doors marked PULL just like everybody else.

(c) Ogden Nash 1948