- trols the eye. It creates the telescope, to be
its assistant. The locomotive steam-engine, with its connected trains of cars, whose tread is like an earthquake traversing the surface, whose rush outruns in noise and power the plunge of the cataract—the soul has created that as a servant to the body, to move this on its errands, and to carry its burdens. The steamship flashing through night and storm, trampling the riotous waves beneath it, and drowning the strife and uproar of the winds, by its more measured and peremptory stroke, is a similar instrument sent forth on the seas. Each began in a thought. Each was born of the soul. And that which produced them has the power to work with them, for any effects.—Richard S. Storrs.
(1951)
MAN A TIMEKEEPER
There are many ways in which a man is like a watch, as this curious epitaph shows, which can be seen in the churchyard at Lydford, Devonshire, England:
Here lies in a horizontal position
The outside case of
George Routledge, watchmaker.
Integrity was the main-spring and prudence
the regulator of all the actions of his life;
Humane, generous and liberal,
His hand never stopt till he had relieved distress;
So nicely regulated were his movements that he never went wrong,
Except when set a-going by people who did not know his key;
Even then he was easily set right again.
He had the art of disposing of his time so well
That his hours glided away in one continued round of pleasure.
Till, in an unlucky moment, his pulse stopt beating.
He ran down Nov. 14, 1801, aged 57,
In hopes of being taken in hand by his Maker,
Thoroughly cleaned, repaired, wound up and set a-going,
In the world to come, when time shall be no more.
(1952)
MAN AS A TEMPLE
My God, I heard this day
That none doth build a stately habitation
But he that means to dwell therein.
What house more stately hath there been
Or can be, than is man? To whose creation
All things are in decay.
Since then, my God, Thou hast
So brave a palace built, O dwell in it,
That it may dwell with Thee at last!
Till Thou afford us so much wit
That, as the world serve us, we may serve Thee,
And both Thy servants be. (Text.)
—George Herbert.
(1953)
MAN GODLIKE
An unidentified writer here points out the greatness of man even tho often overthrown:
Swarming across the earthly crust,
Delving deep in the yellow dust,
Raising his ant-hills here and there,
Scoring the soil for his humble fare,
Braving the sea in his tiny boat—
Tireless he struggles, this human mote.
Tempests scatter his ant-hills wide,
Vainly he braves the boiling tide,
Fire will ruin his busy mart,
Famine stilleth his throbbing heart,
Trembles the earth and prone he falls,
Crusht and tombed by his pigmy walls.
Heir of the kingdom 'neath the skies,
Often he falls, yet falls to rise.
Stumbling, bleeding, beaten back,
Holding still to the upward track;
Playing his part in creation's plan,
Godlike in image—this is man!
(1954)
Man Imitating Nature—See Imitation of Nature.
MAN INDESTRUCTIBLE
Some time ago a Philadelphia anatomist
announced to the world that the brain of
Walt Whitman, through the carelessness of
a hospital employee, had been lost to science.
The jar that held the poet's brain fell to the
floor and was broken, so that not even the
fragments of the organ were saved. Well,
let the poet's brain be shattered, if you will;
the poet himself can not be touched. The
flaming star-wheels can not crush him, the
maddened oceans can not engulf him, the
black caves of night can not hide him, the
scorching flames of hell can not destroy
him. Man is a spark of divinity the image
of deity, an "emotion of God flashed into
time."—F. F. Shannon.
(1955)
