Virtue Won, Then Lost
Donald P. Goodman III
Version 1.0,
As we grow old, our skills grow old, as well,
and talents fade like colors in the sun;
as fruits from ripe to rotten quickly run,
and mind with many tales it wills to tell
will find that time will all its tales dispel;
and all the skills we've mustered, every one,
inevitably start to come undone;
the years will all accomplishments dispel.
So virtue will, like all man's things, decay,
unless, like muscle, we are always trained,
and ever we press back into the fray
especially when virtues we've attained,
and never let ourselves go off astray;
for virtue, won then lost, is sore regained.