Seventh Reading

What Would You Fight For? by DH Lawreance


I am not sure I would always fight for my life.
Life might not be worth fighting for.

I am not sure I would always fight for my wife.
A wife isn't always worth fighting for.

Nor my children, nor my country, nor my fellow-men.
It all deprnds whether I found them worth fighting for.

The only thing men invariably fight for
Is their money.  But I doubt if I'd fight for mine, anyhow
not to shed a lot of blood over it.

Yet one thing I do fight for, tooth and nail, all the time.
And that is my bit of inward peace, where I am at one
with myself.

And I must say, I am often worsted.



As I read this poem over and over, I thought I started to understand more and more of what the poem was telling me... But then I would always get stuck at the last to stanzas. I kept asking myself what's so significant about a tooth and nail? What's so great about them that it's the one thing worth fighting for? Isn't the whole point of fighting to have a meaning? Or even a betteroutcome? Reading it over and over did not help me what so ever in this case, I had to look up what it meant.