without name. What a proof of what we can do for each other?
(602)
COURAGE IN LIFE
This poem has been printed as anonymous and it has also been attributed to Edmund Vance Cook:
Did you tackle the trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven heart, 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're 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,
It's how did you fight, and why.
And tho you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best 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.
(603)
COURAGE, MORAL
Mrs. George E. Pickett, wife of General
Pickett, who led the fatal charge the last
day at Gettysburg against the Union forces,
writes of the tender memories she had of
Grant. She called upon him with her husband
while he was President. Grant knew
that his old comrade of West Point had been
made a poor man by the war, and he offered
him the marshalship of Virginia. While
sorely needing help, he appreciated the heavy
draft made upon the President by office-seekers,
and said: "You can't afford to do
this for me now, and I can't afford to take
it"; but Grant instantly replied with firmness,
"I can afford to do anything I please that is
right."—Col. Nicholas Smith, "Grant, the
Man of Mystery."
(604)
COURAGE OF HOPE
These lines from an unidentified source point a New Year's lesson:
As a dead year is clasped in a dead December,
So let your dead sins with your dead days lie.
A new life is yours and a new hope. Remember
We build our own ladders to climb to the sky.
Stand out in the sunlight of promise, forgetting
Whatever the past held of sorrow or wrong.
We waste half our strength in a useless regretting;
We sit by old tombs in the dark too long.
Have you missed in your aim? Well, the mark is still shining.
Did you faint in the race? Well, take breath for the next.
Did the clouds drive you back? But see yonder their lining.
Were you tempted and fell? Let it serve as a text.
It is never too late to begin rebuilding
Tho all into ruins your life has been hurled,
For see how the light of the New Year is gilding
The wan, worn face of the bruised old world. (Text.)
(605)
COURAGE OF UTTERANCE
James Oppenheim, in a poem, "The Cry of Men," writes this verse inciting to boldness in uttering our truth:
Then put off the coward—live with the Vision!
Let me go to my work in the morning
With fire of God, let me strike in the open, let me cry, cry aloud the age dawning—
Let my life be real—faith in my heart! My eternity hangs on this day—
God in me dies or leaps godward as I thunder my yea or my nay!
(606)
