A New Year Thought

Brother, who on some near morrow
Makes a pledge conceived in sorrow
  Makes a New Year resolution
  Seeking plenary ablution.
Makes a vow to cease from sinning
With this New Year's beginning --
  Here's a thought to give you gladness,
  Here's relief from old year sadness.

Brother, you and I are men.
We have sinned; and yet again
  Shall we sin.  An old year's dying
  Still shall find us ever trying.
Yet here is a thought worth knowing,
While our wild oats we are sowing,
  Sowing where we may not reap --
  Here's a thought to have and keep.

Why waste effort in our sinning,
For no goodlier grace we're winning?
  Let our failings serve an end
  That shall stand us as a friend.
But when we make resolutions --
Bets of New Year institutions --
  Let us heed the later breaking
  In an effort of their making.

Thus, philosophy is giving
Some excuse for our loose living.
  For, while these resolves we make
  Now to hold, and now to break,
We are in our misbehaving
Helping greatly with the paving
  Built of potsherd, scrap and shred
  That we'll some day have to tread.