From an eagle in his flight.
As the mist resembles the rain.
And banish the thoughts of day.
Through the corridors of Time.
And tonight I long for rest.
Of wonderful melodies.
That follows after prayer.
The beauty of thy voice.
And as silently steal away.
Shun not the struggle—face it; 'tis God's gift.
Say not, "The days are evil. Who's to blame?"
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.
Faint not—fight on! To-morrow comes the song.
Determination
There is no chance,
no destiny,
no fate,
[That] can circumvent or hinder
or control
The firm resolve of a
determined soul,
Gifts count for nothing;
will alone is great;
All things give way before it,
soon or late.
What obstacle can stay the mighty force
Of the sea-seeking river in its
course,
Or cause the ascending orb of
day to wait?
Each well-born soul must win
what it deserves.
Let the fool prate of luck.
The fortunate is he whose
earnest purpose never swerves,
Whose slightest action
or inaction serves
The one great aim.
Why, even Death stands still,
And waits an hour sometimes
For such a will.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Dream Big
If there was ever a time to dare,
To make a difference,
To embark on something worth doing,
IT... IS... NOW!
Not for some grand cause, necessarily...
But for something that tugs at your heart,
Something that's your aspiration,
Something that's your dream.
You owe it to yourself
To make your days here count.
Have fun.
Dig deep.
Stretch.
Know, though, that things worth doing
Seldom come easy.
There will be good days.
And there will be bad days.
There will be times when you want to turn around,
Pack it up, and call it quits.
Those times tell you
That you are pushing yourself,
That you are not afraid to learn by trying.
PERSIST.
Because with an idea,
Determination, and the right tools,
You can do great things.
Let your instincts, your intellect,
And your heart guide you.
TRUST.
Believe in the incredible power of the human mind.
Of doing something that makes a difference.
Of working hard.
Of laughing and hoping.
Of lazy afternoons.
Of lasting friends.
Of all the things that will cross your path this year.
The start of something new
Brings the hope of something great,
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!
There is only one YOU,
And you will only go around this way once.
DO... IT... RIGHT!
Gradatim
Heaven is not gained at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
I count this thing to be grandly true,
That a noble deed is a step toward God—
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view.
We rise by things that are 'neath our feet;
By what we have mastered of good and gain;
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.
We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust,
When the morning calls us to life and light,
But our hearts grow weary, and, ere the night,
Our lives are trailing the sordid dust.
We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray,
And we think that we mount the air on wings
Beyond the recall of sensual things,
While our feet still cling to the heavy clay.
Wings for the angels, but feet for men!
We may borrow the wings to find the way—
We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, and pray,
But our feet must rise, or we fall again.
Only in dreams is a ladder thrown From the weary earth to the sapphire walls;
But the dream departs, and the vision falls,
And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone.
Heaven is not reached at a single bound:
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
 |
| Leigh Hunt |
Abou Ben AdhemAbou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look of all sweet acord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord,"
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then.
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed.
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!
—James Henry Leigh Hunt
COLUMBUS
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?"
"Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"
"My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak."
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
"What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
"Why, you shall say, at break of day:
'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'"
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
"Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Adm'r'l; speak and say"—
He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!"
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
"This mad sea shows his teeth to-night;
He curls his lips, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite:
Brave adm'r'l, say but one good word;
What shall we do when hope is gone?"
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! a light! a light! a light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time's burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"
—Joaquin Miller
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:—
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel—
That blue blade that the king's son bears—but this
Blunt thing!"—he snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
—Edward R. Sill
Opportunity
Master of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden, once at every gate!
If sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore—
I answer not, and I return no more.
—John James Ingalls
 |
Emily Dickinson
American Poet
1830-1886
|
Not in Vain
"If I can stop one heart from breaking,I shall not live in vain:If I can ease one life the aching,Or cool one pain,Or help one fainting robinUnto its nest again,I shall not live in vain." —Emily Dickinson
A Psalm of Life
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
 |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882 |
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
"Lives of [others] all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
"Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
She was going to be the President
Of the U.S. of A.
He was going to become an actor
In a Broadway play.
As youngsters — these were their dreams;
The visions they aspired to.
They truly thought these aspirations,
Eventually, would one day come true.
But she did not become President.
The reason is the ultimate sin.
She never ran for office.
She feared she would not win.
He didn't make it to New York City.
In fact, never set foot on the stage.
He thought he'd forget his lines.
In other words — he was afraid.
The lesson in these stories
Is that you must get up and try.
If you let your fears control you,
Your dreams will quickly die.
Because if you want to hit a home run,
You have to go up to the plate.
If you want to meet that special person,
You have to ask them for a date.
The biggest crime in life
Is to forget what you have dreamt.
It's not the act of losing
But to have never made the attempt.
So as you battle with your fears in life,
Remember this brief command:
"If you're not afraid to lead the music,
You may one day lead the band."
—Christopher P. Neck, Ph.D.
What Our World Needs...
Our world has too many leaners;
It needs more LIFTERS.
Our world has a crass cache of critical curmudgeons;
It needs more CHEERFUL CREATORS.
Our world has a surfeit of finger-pointing judges.
It needs more authentic EXAMPLES of personal HONESTY and EXCELLENCE.
Our world has too much debauchery and drug abuse
It needs more DISCIPLINE and DELAYED GRATIFICATION.
Our world is too oft marked by hatred, division, and vicious vitriol.
It needs more LOVE, UNITY, and volitional VIRTUE.
Our world is plagued by partisan politics and puerile polemics
It cries out in desperation for more STATESMANSHIP and BALANCE
Our world has so much potential yet to be realized;
What are YOU doing TODAY to help it yet rise to that potential?
—Dr. JJ
 |
Rudyard Kipling
(1865-1936)
1907 Noble Prize Winner (Literature) |
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
—Rudyard Kipling
How Did You Die?
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there — that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,
But how did you fight — and why?
And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best that you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only how did you die?
—Edmund Vance Cook
The Builders
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
WAITING
"Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
I stay my haste, I make delays—
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways
And what is mine shall know my face.
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me,
No wind can drive my bark astray
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
—John Burroughs
The Impossible Dream
"To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star."
Lyrics by: Joe Darion
From the 1965 Broadway Musical, Man of La Mancha
Beyond the haze of what we face,
There lies the track on which we'll race,
But what we often soon forget—
It's also 'neath our current pace.
We always look beyond the mists,
Squint through the fog toward future lists,
And rarely opt to seize the day,
The here and now's so often missed!
For what we fail to contemplate,
The present's where we carve our fate,
And future's bliss' only secured,
By mast'ring what's now on our plate.
But when we grasp on to what's ours,
That's how we'll break our prison bars,
And rise in ways we'd never though,
To mighty deeds and distant stars.
O man, no longer cast your view,
On things that aren't in front of you,
Do your best now, and trust in faith,
That all things in their time shall find you.
—Dr. JJ
I am Freedom Focused—
Focused, that is, on Freedom.
Freedom from tyrants,
And evil and terror,
Freedom from bias,
Injustice and error,
But most of all...
Freedom from myself,
And the devil within—
A fiend far more fearsome
Than the author of sin.
Freedom in all its glorious majesty
And liberating bliss
Will be mine forever
If I'll remember this:
Universal Laws exist and govern
Outside of all human opinion or arbitration,
And Serendipity
Has my back and yours—
As long as we do our part.
Therefore:
I truly
Am
Sovereign
And by extension—
FREE—
To be
The kind of Man
I want to be
In this life,
And throughout
Eternity.
I am, therefore, Freedom Focused—
Focused, that is, on
Freedom—
Now,
Tomorrow,
&
Forever.
—Dr. JJ
The Day was lost, as many had.
Another gone, a tragic fad.
Lost, yet I, not really through,
Still saw some hope to start anew,
And climb back up into the sky.
And yet, such fret did cross my face,
For to realize
The length still in the race
Placed teardrops in my salty eyes.
Then, in the midst of agony,
My Rubicon comes, and I resolve:
I must not quit,
Run, race the way,
Claw my way out of this pit,
And then one day,
Stand boldly up,
And humbly say:
"Time is done,
And I have crossed
The Finish Line."
—Dr. JJ
The Finish Line, Part II
As many had,
Another gained,
A glorious fad.
Won, yet I,
Not really through,
Still saw the dangers
Lurking true.
And yet,
Such hope did fill my soul,
For to realize
The dragons
God and I had slain,
Empowered me and
gave me rest;
And with my newfound strength
and power,
I'll boldly take on each new hour,
Resolved beyond the tempter's snares,
I am equipped to meet all cares.
and thus endowed,
My sword, once set in stone's
Allowed, to be drawn forth
To help me
Fight,
And race,
To win,
And make
It through
The night
First place
In the most important race of all—
A race pitting me
Against me
And Existential Gravity—
That I might
Each day
Stand boldly
Up
And humbly
Say:
On,
I will keep on...
To
Cross
Each Finish
Line."
—Dr. JJ
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company.
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
—William Wordsworth
Polonius' Advice to Laertes
 |
William Shakespeare
1564-1616
Author of Hamlet |
See thou character.—Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as they purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—Shakespeare
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Hamlet's Soliloquy To be, or not to be; that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die; to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death—
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler returns—puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
 |
Alice Cary
1820-187 |
Nobility
True worth is in being, not seeming,—
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good—not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.
We get back our mete as we measure—
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.
'Tis not in the pages of story
The heart of its ills to beguile,
Though he who makes courtship to glory
Gives all that he hath for her smile.
For when from her heights he has won her,
Alas! it is only to prove
That nothing's so sacred as honor,
And nothing so loyal as love!
We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses,
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.
Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world, early and late,
No jot of our courage abating—
Our part is to work and to wait.
And slight is the sting of his trouble
Whose winnings are less than his worth;
For he who is honest is noble,
Whatever his fortunes or birth.
Chisel in hand stood a sculptor boy
With his marble block before him,
And his eyes lit up with a smile of joy,
As an angel-dream passed o’er him.
He carved the dream on that shapeless stone,
With many a sharp incision;
With heaven’s own light the sculpture shone,—
He’d caught that angel-vision.
Children of life are we, as we stand
With our lives uncarved before us,
Waiting the hour when, at God’s command,
Our life-dream shall pass o’er us.
If we carve it then on the yielding stone,
With many a sharp incision,
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own,—
Our lives, that angel-vision.
—George Washington Doane
Maud Muller
Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast;
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane:
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And asked a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered goan.
"Thanks!" said the Judge, "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass, and flowers, and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown,
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah, me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat;
I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day;
And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er has it been my lot to meet;
And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
"Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:
No doubtful balance of right and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues;
But low of cattle and song of birds,
And health, and quiet, and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold;
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old-love tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power;
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes,
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
"Ah, that I were free again!
Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door;
But care and sorrow and wasting pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinet turned;
The tallow candle an astral burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty, and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been!"
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And in the hereafter angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!
—John Greenleaf Whittier
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgment upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.
—Dale Wimbrow
I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.
Half the things you do you might as well turn over to me
And I will do them quickly and correctly.
I am easily managed — you must merely be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you want something done
And after a few lessons, I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of all great people
And alas, of all failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
Though I work with all the precision of a machine
Plus the intelligence of a person.
You may run me for profit or run me for ruin—
It makes no difference to me.
Take me, train me, be firm with me,
And I will place the world at your feet.
Be easy with me and I will destroy you.
Who am I?
I am HABIT!
—Anonymous
Horatius
... Then outspake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods? ...
—Thomas Babington Macaulay
The Sun-Dial at Wells College
The shadow by my finger castDivides the future from the past:Before it, sleeps the unborn hour
In darkness, and beyond thy power:
Behind its unreturning line,
The vanished hour, no longer thine:
One hour alone is in thy hands,—
The NOW on which the shadow stands.
March, 1904
—Henry Van Dyke
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
—Langston Hughes
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
—Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae
Sermons We See
I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day;
I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.
The eye's a better pupil and more willing than the ear,
Fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear;
And the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds,
For to see good put in action is what everybody needs.
I soon can learn to do it if you'll let me see it done;
I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run.
And the lecture you deliver may be very wise and true,
But I'd rather get my lessons by observing what you do;
For I might misunderstand you and the high advice you give,
But there's no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.
When I see a deed of kindness, I am eager to be kind.
When a weaker brother stumbles and a strong man stays behind
Just to see if he can help him, then the wish grows strong in me
To become as big and thoughtful as I know that friend to be.
And all travelers can witness that the best of guides today
Is not the one who tells them, but the one who shows the way.
One good man teaches many, men believe what they behold;
One deed of kindness noticed is worth forty that are told.
Who stands with men of honor learns to hold his honor dear,
For right living speaks a language which to every one is clear.
Though an able speaker charms me with his eloquence, I say,
I'd rather see a sermon that to hear one, any day.
—Edgar A. Guest
The Things That Are More Excellent
As we wax older on this earth,
Till many a toy that charmed us seems
Emptied of beauty, stripped of worth,
And mean as dust and dead as dreams,—
For gauds that perished, shows that passed,
Some recompense the Fates have sent:
Thrice lovelier shine the things that last,
The things that are more excellent.
Tired of the Senate's barren brawl,
An hour of silence we prefer,
Where statelier rise the woods than all
Yon towers of talk at Westminster.
Let this man prate and that man plot,
On fame or place or title bent:
The votes of veering crowds are not
The things that are more excellent.
Shall we perturb and vex our soul
For "wrongs" which no true freedom mar,
Which no man's upright walk control,
And from no guiltless deed debar?
What odds though tonguesters heal, or leave
Unhealed, the grievance they invent?
To things, not phantoms, let us cleave—
The things that are more excellent.
Nought nobler is, than to be free:
The stars of heaven are free because
In amplitude of liberty
Their joy is to obey the laws.
From servitude to freedom's name
Free thou thy mind in bondage pent;
Depose the fetich, and proclaim
The things that are more excellent.
And in appropriate dust be hurled
That dull, punctilious god, whom they
That call their tiny clan the world,
Serve and obsequiously obey:
Who con their ritual of Routine,
With minds to one dead likeness blent,
And never ev'n in dreams have seen
The things that are more excellent.
To dress, to call, to dine, to break
No canon of the social code,
The little laws that lacqueys make,
The futile decalogue of Mode,—
How many a soul for these things lives,
With pious passion, grave intent!
While Nature careless-handed gives
The things that are more excellent.
To hug the wealth ye cannot use,
And lack the riches all may gain,—
O blind and wanting wit to choose,
Who house the chaff and burn the grain!
And still doth life with starry towers
Lure to the bright, divine ascent!—
Be yours the things ye would: be ours
The things that are more excellent.
The grace of friendship—mind and heart
Linked with their fellow heart and mind;
The gains of science, gifts of art;
The sense of oneness with our kind;
The thirst to know and understand—
A large and liberal discontent:
These are the goods in life's rich hand,
The things that are more excellent.
In faultless rhythm the ocean rolls,
A rapturous silence thrills the skies;
And on this earth are lovely souls,
That softly look with aidful eyes.
Though dark, O God, Thy course and track,
I think Thou must at least have meant
That nought which lives should wholly lack
The things that are more excellent.
—William Watson
My Country, 'Tis of Thee
My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of colour beneath the sky:
Blue and crimson and white it shines
Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
The colours before us fly;
But more than the flag is passing by.
Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State:
Weary marches and sinking ships;
Cheers of victory on dying lips;
Days of plenty and years of peace;
March of a strong land’s swift increase;
Equal justice, right, and law,
Stately honour and reverend awe;
Sign of a nation, great and strong
Toward her people from foreign wrong:
Pride and glory and honour,—all
Live in the colours to stand or fall.
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
And loyal hearts are beating high:
A FIRE-MIST and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty
And a face turned from the clod,—
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.
A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite, tender sky,
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high;
And all over upland and lowland
The charm of the golden-rod,—
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.
Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearning
Come welling and surging in:
Come from the mystic ocean
Whose rim no foot has trod,—
Some of us call it Longing,
A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved of her brood,
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood;
And millions who, humble and nameless,
The strait, hard pathway plod,—
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.
 |
This poem was a favorite of
Abraham Lincoln's |
Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant’s affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure,—her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.
The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep;
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen,—
We drink the same stream and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.
They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
They died, ay! they died: and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea ! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,—
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
From Ode on Intimations of Immortality
[We] Forget the glories [we] hath known
And that imperial palace whence [we] came.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air,
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectar’d wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
By: William Ernest Henley
Henley, W.E. (1922). In Cook, R.J. 101 Famous Poems. Google Books Edition. Page 95.
Somebody said that it couldn't be done
But he with a chuckle replied:
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so til he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
[Then] he started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it!
Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it,"
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle [right] in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done" and you'll do it.
By: Edgar A. Guest
If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin!
'Taint no use to sit an' whine
When the fish ain't on your line;
Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin'—
Keep a-goin!
When the weather kills your crop,
Keep a-goin!
Though 'tis work to reach the top,
Keep a-goin!
S'pose you're out o' ev'ry dime,
Gittin' broke ain't any crime;
Tell the world you're feelin' prime—
Keep a-goin!
When it looks like all is up,
Keep a-goin!
Drain the sweetness from the cup,
Keep a-goin!
See the wild birds on the wing,
Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
When you feel like singin', sing—
Keep a-goin!
By: Frank L. Stanton
Success is Counted Sweetest
SUCCESS is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear.
By: Emily Dickinson
"This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot,
This earth,
This realm,
This England!"*
—William Shakespeare
*Gaunt, from Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1
Character of the Happy Warrior
 |
Wordsworth's Lake District Home
Cumbria, England. |
Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
—It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to
learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, be-
reaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable—because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
—'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labours good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
—Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must
fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose powers shed round him in the common
strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has
joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
—He who, though thus endued as with a
sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, whereso'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to
love:—
'Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,—
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not—
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be
won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand
fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the
earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name—
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.
—William Wordsworth
The Present Crisis
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's
aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to
west,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within
him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of
Time.
Though the walls of hut and palace shoot the instan-
taneous throe,
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to
and fro;
A the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips
apart,
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath
the Future's heart.
So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies
with God
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by
the sod,
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler
clod.
For mankind are one in spirit, and in instinct bears
along,
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right
or wrong;
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast
frame
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or
shame;—
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to
decide;
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or
evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the
bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left had and the sheep upon
the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and
that light.
Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou
shalt stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust
against our land?
Through the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is
strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her
throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all
wrong.
Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments
see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, just through
Oblivion's sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet
earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath
passed by;
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and
the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the
throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim
unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above
his own.
We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is
great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm
of fate,
But the soul is still oracular amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whispers from the Delphic cave
within,—
"The enslave their children's children who make com-
promise with sin."
Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched
the earth with blood,
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer
day,
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;—
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless chil-
dren play?
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her
wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous
to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward
stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had
denied.
Count me o'er the earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls
that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious
stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam
incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith
divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's
supreme design.
By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I
track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns
not back,
And these mounts of anguish number how each genera-
tion learned
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-
hearts hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to
heaven upturned.
For humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr
stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands:
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.
'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father's graves,
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a
crime;—
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men
behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Ply-
mouth Rock sublime?
These were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's;
But we make their truth our falsehood thinking that hath
made us free,
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits
flee
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them
across the sea.
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors
to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste
to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps
away
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of today?
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good
uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep
abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleams her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pil-
grims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the des-
perate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted
key.
—James Russell Lowell
Richard CoryWhenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favoured, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
—Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver CheevyMiniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
—Edwin Arlington Robinson
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
By: Carl Sandburg
I Have a Rendezvous With Death
I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade
When Spring comes round with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air.
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath;
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
By: Alan Seeger
—Dr. JJ
February 8, 2023
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA
Author's Note: This is the 307th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 133rd consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
Click HERE for a compete listing of the other 306 FF Blog Articles.
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL QUOTES.
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL POEMS.
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