Fall or triumph, stand or droop;
You must either serve or govern,
Must be slave or must be sovereign;
Must, in fine, be block or wedge,
Must be anvil or be sledge.—Goethe.
In this world a man must be either anvil or hammer.
Longfellow: Hyperion.
Lockhart says, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, “It was on this occasion, I believe, that Scott first saw his friend’s brother Reginald (Heber), in after-days the Apostolic Bishop of Calcutta. He had just been declared the successful competitor for that year’s poetical prize, and read to Scott at breakfast, in Brazennose College, the MS. of his Palestine. Scott observed that in the verses on Solomon’s Temple one striking circumstance had escaped him, namely, that no tools were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes to the corner of the room, and returned with the beautiful lines,—
No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung:
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.