All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom.
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid–
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Amen.

(From the Monty Python movie, The Meaning of Life)

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more-
the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men;
the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort-
to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful
of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold,
grows small, and expires- and expires, too soon, too soon- before life itself.
(excerpt from Marlow, in Youth – 1902).

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its’ sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"my name is Ozymandais, king of kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!"

Nothing beside remains, Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

You say there is no substance here,
One great reality above:
Back from that void I shrink in fear,
And child-like hide myself in love:
Show me what angels feel. Till then,
I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires
From faltering lips and fitful veins
To sexless souls, ideal quires,
Unwearied voices, wordless strains:
My mind with fonder welcome owns
One dear dead friend’s remembered tones.

Forsooth the present we must give
To that which cannot pass away;
All beauteous things for which we live
By law of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why
I clasp them, is because I die.

It may be misery not to sing at all
And to go silent through the brimming day.
It may be sorrow never to be loved,
But deeper grief’s than these beset the way.

To have come near to sing the perfect song
And only by a half-tone lost the key,
There is the potent sorrow, there the grief,
The pale, sad staring of life’s tragedy.

To have just missed the perfect love,
Not the hot passion of untempered youth,
But that which lays aside its vanity
And gives thee, for thy trusting worship, truth–

This, this it is to be accursed indeed;
For if we mortals love, or if we sing,
We count our joys not by the things we have,
But by what kept us from the perfect thing.

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
Because I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
I can go a hundred miles an hour
‘Cause I’ve got almighty power
Right there on the dashboard of my car

Got myself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones, sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Going ninety I ain’t scary
‘Cause I’ve got the Virgin Mary
Telling me that I won’t go to hell.

Riding down a thoroughfare
With his nose up in the air
A wreck may be ahead, but he don’t mind
Trouble coming He don’t see
He just keeps his eye on me
And any other thing that lies behind

When I’m in a traffic jam
He don’t care if I say "damn"
I can let all my curses roll
Plastic Jesus doesn’t hear
‘Cause he has a plastic ear
The man who invented plastic saved my soul

If I weave around at night
And policemen think I’m tight
They never find my bottle, though they ask
Plastic Jesus shelters me
For his head comes off you see
He’s hollow and I use Him for a flask

This is the version I seem to remember – the 1960’s, sign-on song of a disk jockey named Don Imis. There are other versions, like the one below.
Chuck

I don’t care if I’m broke or starvin’
As long as I’ve a fish named Darwin
Glued to the trunklid of my car
God, I’m feeling so evolved
Drivin’ with my problems solved
Proclaiming what I think of what we are