Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
So, still within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
"This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."
For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
Robert Browning.
TO MELANCHOLY
The last invitation anybody would accept is "Come, let us weep together." If we keep melancholy at our house, we should be careful to have it under lock and key, so that no one will observe it.
Melancholy,
Melancholy,
I've no use for you, by Golly!
Yet I'm going to keep you hidden
In some chamber dark, forbidden,
Just as though you were a prize, sir,
Made of gold, and I a miser—
Not because I think you jolly,
Melancholy!
Not for that I mean to hoard you,
Keep you close and lodge and board you
As I would my sisters, brothers,
Cousins, aunts, and old grandmothers,
But that you shan't bother others
With your sniffling, snuffling folly,
Howling,
Yowling,
Melancholy.
John Kendrick Bangs.
From "Songs of Cheer."