Shakespeare Challenge: ‘seen better days’

'Seen better days' from As you like it.

This is my Dad’s carpentry mallet. It’s older than me - perhaps 80 years plus. It’s been in my tool box for the past 50 years or so.

It is one of the simplest and oldest of tools. The mallet belongs to the hammer family. Earliest examples - made of stone - are thought to be around 2.4 million years old.

Aesthetically it may have seen better days. But it’s outlived the various chisels that I’ve mated it with over the years. And I’ve never seen any need to replace it.

if I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening
all over this land

but the neighbours wouldn’t like it
they’d make a lot of fuss
they’d say I was too noisy
and they would swear and cuss

so I’d put away my hammer
for another day
and then I’d smash a lot of things
till they put me away