We all tried. But it didn't work.

Mary's voice broke as she added, "Oh, poor... poor..."
"Poor what?" asked the doctor.
"Life," Mary replied promptly. "These bivouacs where the soldiers are, are bad.  We can't all be heroes."
"A bivouac," the doctor pointed out," is not where the soldiers are.  A bivuoac is any encampment."
"I'm telling you the way it was," Mary replied with a tinge of irritation. "A word doesn't matter.  The bivouac, where all of us were, was bad.  We were soldiers in a losing battle.  That's the way it was.  Still achieving, still pursuing, we learned to labor and to wait.  We tried to be patient.  We were very good all the time when we were little.  We learned a lot, and we tried and tried and tried.  Sybil tried.  I tried.  We all tried.  But it didn't work."
"Mary," the doctor remarked gently, "perhaps something stood in the way of trying.  Perhaps the trying will work when we discover what that something was."
"So you see," Mary answered, ignoring the doctor's comment, "you can't always trust the poets. I don't trust anybody."