Value of Writing
Blest be that gracious power
Who taught mankind
To stamp a lasting image
On the mind:
Beasts may convey,
And tuneful birds may sing
Their mutual feelings
In the opening spring;
But man alone has skill
And power to send
The heart's warm dictates
To the distant friend:
Tis his also to please,
Instruct, advise,
Ages remote,
And nations yet to rise.
Crabbe
Use the Pen
Use the pen! there's magic in it,
Never let it lag behind;
Write thy thought, the pen can win it
From the chaos of the mind.
Many a gem is lost forever
By the careless passer-by,
But the gems of thought should never
On the mental pathway lie.
Use the pen! reck not that others
Take a higher flight than thine.
Many an ocean cave still smothers
Pearls of price beneath the brine.
So thy words and thoughts securing
Honest praise from wisdom's tongue,
May, in time, be as enduring
As the strains which Homer sung.
J. E. Carpenter
Power of the Pen
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Lord Lytton
Letters
Such a little thing—a letter,
Yet so much it may contain:
Written thoughts and mute expressions
Full of pleasure, fraught with pain.
When our hearts are sad at parting,
Comes a gleam of comfort bright,
In the mutual promise given:
"We will not forget to write."
Plans and doings of the absent;
Scraps of news we like to hear,
All remind us, e'en though distant,
Kind remembrance keeps us near.
Yet sometimes a single letter
Turns the sunshine into shade;
Chills our efforts, clouds our prospects,
Blights our hopes and makes them fade.
Messengers of joy or sorrow,
Life or death, success, despair,
Bearers of affection's wishes,
Greetings kind or loving prayer.
Prayer or greeting, were we present,
Would be felt, but half unsaid;
We can write—because our letters—
Not our faces—will be read?
Who has not some treasured letters,
Fragments choice of other's lives;
Relics, some, of friends departed,
Friends whose memory still survives?
Touched by neither time nor distance,
Will their words unspoken last?
Voiceless whispers of the present,
Silent echoes of the past!
The Right Method of Composition
Never be in haste in writing:
Let that thou utterest be of nature's flow,
Not art's, a fountain's, not a pump's. But once
Begun, work thou all things into thy work:
And set thyself about it, as the sea
About the earth, lashing it day and night:
And leave the stamp of thine own soul in it
As thorough as the fossil flower in clay:
The theme shall start and struggle in thy breast,
Like to a spirit in its tomb at rising,
Rending the stones, and crying—Resurrection.
P. J. Bailey

[Previous] - [Index] - [Next]

Page 95—Drawing Land