If I must have an ill, may it be real, That I may meet it eye to eye and fight, And wheresoever it may strength reveal Get after it with all my main and might. The woe that but impends and wears the mind With worry deep and most vexatious care, Is harder fighting than the realler kind, For when you come to strike—it isn't there!

Bangs contrasts tangible adversity with the more corrosive suffering of anticipation. A “real” ill—something concrete—can be faced directly, measured, and resisted with “main and might.” By contrast, the “woe that but impends” is anxiety: a projected threat that consumes attention, drains energy, and multiplies itself through imagination. Its cruelty lies in its evasiveness: when one finally “come[s] to strike,” there is nothing definite to confront, only the residue of worry. The stanza thus argues for courage and clarity—preferring actionable problems over vague dread—and suggests that mental rehearsal of disaster can be more exhausting than the disaster itself.