For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!
THE SACREDNESS OF WORK
Thomas Carlyle
All true work is sacred; in all true hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler's calculations, Newton's meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroism, martyrdoms—up to that "Agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! Oh, brother, if this is not "worship," then, I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky!
Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Body-guard of the Empire of Mind. Even in the weak human memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving; peopling the immeasured solitudes of Time! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind—as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!" Thou, too, shalt return home, in honor to thy far-distant home, doubt it not—if in the battle thou keep thy shield.