Practice Book - Leland Powers
3. Then wise work is _Cheerful_, as a child's work is. Everybody in
this room has been taught to pray daily, "Thy Kingdom come." Now if we
hear a man swearing in the streets we think it very wrong, and say he
"takes God's name in vain." But there's a twenty times worse way of taking
His name in vain than that. It is to _ask God for what we don't
want_. If you don't want a thing don't ask for it: such asking is the
worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with. If you do not wish for
His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray
for it; you must work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it
is.
4. Observe, it is a Kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it.
Also it is not to come all at once, but quietly; nobody knows how. "The
Kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Also, it is not to come
outside of us, but in our hearts: "The Kingdom of God is within you." Now
if we want to work for this Kingdom, and to bring it, and to enter into
it, there's one curious condition to be first accepted. We must enter into
it as children, or not at all; "Whosoever will not receive it as a little
child shall not enter therein." And again, "Suffer little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not, _for of such is the Kingdom of
Heaven_."
5. Of _such_, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as
children. It is the _character_ of children we want and must gain. It
is modest, faithful, loving, and because of all these characters it is
cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for
nothing--being full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether
in its play or in its duty. Well, that's the great worker's character
also. Taking no thought for the morrow; taking thought only for the duty
of the day; knowing indeed what labor is, but not what sorrow is; and
always ready for play--beautiful play.
JOHN RUSKIN.
* * * * *
EXTRACT FROM "THE RING AND THE BOOK."
Our human speech is naught,
Our human testimony false, our fame
And human estimation words and wind.
Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.
How look a brother in the face and say
"Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind,
Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length,
And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!"
Say this as silvery as tongue can troll--
The anger of the man may be endured,
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him
Are not so bad to bear--but here's the plague,
That all this trouble comes of telling truth,
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false,
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant,
Nor recognizable by whom it left;
While falsehood would have done the work of truth.
But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever the Adante dived,--
So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye, and save the soul besides.
* * * * *
SELF-RELIANCE.
1. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in
your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the
inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered
back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of
the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and
Milton is that they all set at naught books and tradition, and spoke not
what men but what _they_ thought.
2. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament
of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because
it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts;
they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
3. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They
teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored
inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what
we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with
shame our own opinion from another.
4. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must
take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide
universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but
through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to
till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he
knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
5. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression
on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without
preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that
it might testify of that particular ray.
6. We but half express ourselves, and we are ashamed of that divine idea
which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and
of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his
work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put
his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done
otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not
deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no
invention, no hope.
7. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your
contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so,
and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying
their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their
heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
8. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same
transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner,
not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and
benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the
Dark.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
* * * * *
RHODORA.
ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THIS FLOWER?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
* * * * *
EACH AND ALL.
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky;--
He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.
The delicate shell lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;--
The gay enchantment was undone;
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:"--
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;--
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
* * * * *
COLUMBUS.
[This poem is taken from the complete works of Joaquin Miller,
copyrighted, published by the Whitaker Ray Company, San Francisco.]
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 Admiral, speak, what shall I say!"
"Why, say, 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"
"My men grow mutinous by day,
My men grow ghastly pale and weak."
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
"What shall I say, brave Admiral, 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 has gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say"--
He said, "Sail on! sail on! and on!"
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
"This mad sea shows its teeth to-night.
He curls his lips, he lies in wait
With lifted teeth as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, 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.
* * * * *
MY LAST DUCHESS.
FERRARA.
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said.
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat;" such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked
Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark"--and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
--E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat
The Count your Master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, Sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
ROBERT BROWNING.
* * * * *
"THE TALE."
What a pretty tale you told me
Once upon a time
--Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)
Was it prose or rhyme,
Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
While your shoulder propped my head.
Anyhow there's no forgetting
This much if no more,
That a poet (pray, no petting!)
Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,
Went where such like used to go,
Singing for a prize, you know.
Well, he had to sing, nor merely
Sing, but play the lyre;
Playing was important clearly
Quite as singing; I desire,
Sir, you keep the fact in mind
For a purpose that's behind.
There stood he, while deep attention
Held the judges round,
--Judges able, I should mention,
To detect the slightest sound
Sung or played amiss: such ears
Had old judges, it appears!
None the less he sang out boldly,
Played in time and tune
Till the judges, weighing coldly
Each note's worth, seemed, late or soon,
Sure to smile "In vain one tries
Picking faults out: take the prize!"
When, a mischief! Were they seven
Strings the lyre possessed?
Oh, and afterwards eleven,
Thank you! Well, sir--who had guessed
Such ill luck in store?--it happed
One of those same seven strings snapped.
All was lost, then! No! a cricket
(What "cicada"? Pooh!)
--Some mad thing that left its thicket
For mere love of music--flew
With its little heart on fire
Lighted on the crippled lyre.
So that when (Ah, joy!) our singer
For his truant string
Feels with disconcerted finger,
What does cricket else but fling
Fiery heart forth, sound the note
Wanted by the throbbing throat?
Ay and, ever to the ending,
Cricket chirps at need,
Executes the hand's intending,
Promptly, perfectly,--indeed
Saves the singer from defeat
With her chirrup low and sweet.
Till, at ending, all the judges
Cry with one assent
"Take the prize--a prize who grudges
Such a voice and instrument?
Why, we took your lyre for harp,
So it shrilled us forth F sharp!"
Did the conqueror spurn the creature,
Once its service done?
That's no such uncommon feature
In the case when Music's son
Finds his Lotte's power too spent
For aiding soul development.
No! This other, on returning
Homeward, prize in hand,
Satisfied his bosom's yearning:
(Sir! I hope you understand!)
--Said "Some record there must be
Of this cricket's help to me!"
So he made himself a statue:
Marble stood, life-size;
On the lyre, he pointed at you,
Perched his partner in the prize;
Never more apart you found
Her, he throned, from him, she crowned.
That's the tale: its application?
Somebody I know
Hopes one day for reputation
Through his poetry that's--Oh,
All so learned and so wise
And deserving of a prize!
If he gains one, will some ticket,
When his statue's built,
Tell the gazer "'Twas a cricket
Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt
Sweet and low, when strength usurped
Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped?
"For as victory was nighest,
While I sang and played,--
With my lyre at lowest, highest,
Right alike,--one string that made
'Love' sound soft was snapt in twain
Never to be heard again,--
"Had not a kind cricket fluttered,
Perched upon the place
Vacant left, and duly uttered
'Love, Love, Love,' whene'er the bass
Asked the treble to atone
For its somewhat sombre drone."
But you don't know music! Wherefore
Keep on casting pearls
To a--poet? All I care for
Is--to tell him a girl's
"Love" comes aptly in when gruff
Grows his singing. (There, enough!)
ROBERT BROWNING.
* * * * *
MONT BLANC BEFORE SUNRISE.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc!
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee, and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge. But when I look again
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,--
So sweet we know not we are listening to it,--
Thou, the mean while wast blending with my thought.
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing--there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs! all join my hymn!
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink,--
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald--wake! O wake! and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?
And who commanded,--and the silence came,--
"Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?"
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain--
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plain echo, "God!"
"God!" sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!"
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise!
Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast,--
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thou
That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud
To rise before me,--rise, oh, ever rise!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
S.T. COLERIDGE.
* * * * *
MY STAR.
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue,
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled;
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
ROBERT BROWNING.
* * * * *
A CONSERVATIVE.
The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly
A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly,
All doleful and forlorn.
I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise,
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.
Said I, "What can the matter be?
Why weepest thou so sore?
With garden fair and sunlight free
And flowers in goodly store--"
But he only turned away from me
And burst into a roar.
Cried he, "My legs are thin and few
Where once I had a swarm!
Soft fuzzy fur--a joy to view--
Once kept my body warm,
Before these flapping wing-things grew,
To hamper and deform!"
At that outrageous bug I shot
The fury of mine eye;
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
In rage and anger high,
"You ignominious idiot!
Those wings are made to fly!"
"I do not want to fly," said he,
"I only want to squirm!"
And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
But still his voice was firm;
"I do not want to be a fly!
I want to be a worm!"
O yesterday of unknown lack!
To-day of unknown bliss!
I left my fool in red and black,
The last I saw was this,--
The creature madly climbing back
Into his chrysalis.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN.
* * * * *
FIVE LIVES.
Five mites of monads dwelt in a round drop
That twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun.
To the naked eye they lived invisible;
Specks, for a world of whom the empty shell
Of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.
One was a meditative monad, called a sage;
And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought:
"Tradition, handed down for hours and hours,
Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world,
Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence,
When I am very old, yon shimmering dome
Come drawing down and down, till all things end?"
Then with a weazen smirk he proudly felt
No other mote of God had ever gained
Such giant grasp of universal truth.
One was a transcendental monad; thin
And long and slim in the mind; and thus he mused:
"Oh, vast, unfathomable monad-Souls!
Made in the image"--a hoarse frog croaks from the pool--
"Hark! 'twas some god, voicing his glorious thought
In thunder music! Yea, we hear their voice,
And we may guess their minds from ours, their work.
Some taste they have like ours, some tendency
To wiggle about, and munch a trace of scum."
He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas
That burst, pricked by the air, and he was gone.
One was a barren-minded monad, called
A positivist; and he knew positively:
"There is no world beyond this certain drop.
Prove me another! Let the dreamers dream
Of their faint gleams, and noises from without,
And higher and lower; life is life enough."
Then swaggering half a hair's breadth, hungrily
He seized upon an atom of bug and fed.
One was a tattered monad, called a poet;
And with shrill voice ecstatic thus he sang:
"Oh, the little female monad's lips!
Oh, the little female monad's eyes!
Ah, the little, little, female, female monad!"
The last was a strong-minded monadess,
Who dashed amid the infusoria,
Danced high and low, and wildly spun and dove
Till the dizzy others held their breath to see.
But while they led their wondrous little lives
AEonian moments had gone wheeling by.
The burning drop had shrunk with fearful speed;
A glistening film--'twas gone; the leaf was dry.
The little ghost of an inaudible squeak
Was lost to the frog that goggled from his stone;
Who, at the huge, slow tread of a thoughtful ox
Coming to drink, stirred sideways fatly, plunged,
Launched backward twice, and all the pool was still.