Among the branches of the leafless trees;
All are the undying offspring of one Sire.
Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed,
Shine, poet, in thy place, and be content.”
If we weave a yard of tape in all humility, says Emerson, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see that it was “no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that the threads were Time and Nature.” Without number, as Archdeacon Hare puts it, are the sutlers and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who attend the march of intellect; many of them busied in building and fitting up and painting and emblazoning the chariot; others in lessening the friction of the wheels; while others move forward in detachments, and level the way it is to pass over, and cut down the obstacles which would impede its progress. And these too, he proceeds to say, “have their reward. If so be they labour diligently in their calling, not only will they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence in the lowliest task never fails to win; not only will the sweat of their brows be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows; but, when the victory is at last achieved, they come in for a share of the glory; even as the meanest soldier who fought at Marathon or at Leipsic became a sharer in the glory of those saving days.” Remember, with Owen Meredith,—
“Remember, every man God made
Is different: has some deed to do,
Some work to work. Be undismay’d
Though thine be humble: do it too.”
An elder teacher would qualify the Remember by a Do not forget, that “it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.” If we cannot pursue a trade or a science—says a memorable voice from a sick-room,—if we cannot keep house, or help the state, or write books, or earn our own bread or that of others, we can do the work to which all this is only subsidiary; “we can cherish a sweet and holy temper; we can vindicate the supremacy of mind over body; we can, in defiance of our liabilities, minister pleasure and hope to the gayest who come prepared to receive pain from the spectacle of our pain; we can, here as well as in heaven’s courts hereafter, reveal the angel growing into its immortal aspect, which is the highest achievement we could propose to ourselves, or that grace from above, could propose to us, if we had a free choice of all possible conditions of human life.”