Does not every man at times feel the aspiration to realize the man he
“might have been”:
Across the fields of long ago
He sometimes comes to me,
A little lad with face aglow--
The lad I used to be.
And yet he smiles so wistfully,
Once he has crept within--
I think that he still hopes to see
The man I might have been!
(147)
* * * * *
Climb on! Climb ever! Ne’er despond,
Tho from each summit gained
There stretch forth ever heights beyond--
Ideals to be attained!
Life’s rescript simply is to climb,
Unheeding toil and tire;
Failure hath no attaint of crime,
If we but still aspire.
--JAMES T. WHITE, “Character Lessons.”
(148)
* * * * *
The spirit of man is not intended to grovel on low levels or to
gravitate downward under carnal influences. Man is the only creature on
earth so constructed physically as to be able to gaze upward.
“He died climbing” is the simple inscription on a monument to
an Alpine guide, who perished when attempting the ascent of a
peak. That record is a noble tribute to a hero. His attitude
should be ours--looking upward and pressing forward. He was
pressing on in the pathway of duty. Many a splendid career,
intercepted at the critical juncture, might be described by
the same sententious record. “He died climbing” may be said of
many a young and ardent enthusiast--of Mackay, soon cut off in
Uganda; of Bishop Hannington, reaching the border of the same
land and martyred there; of Patteson, soon slain in Melanesia
by islanders who mistook him for a slave-catching captain; of
Henry Martyn, who did not live to see any of the results of his
mission; of Wyclif, who sent forth the Bible in English but was
not permitted to see the beginning of the Reformation. All these
“died climbing.” (Text.)
(149)
* * * * *
Theodosia Garrison points out in these verses that aspiration, even
when it fails of realization, is good for the soul:
Let me remember that I failed,
So I may not forget
How dear that goal the distance veiled
Toward which my feet were set.
Let me forget, if so Thy will,
How fair the joy desired,
Dear God, so I remember still
That one day I aspired. (Text.)
--_Ainslee’s Magazine._
(150)
* * * * *
W. H. T. Squires expresses the normal law of the soul--that its desires
are to rise and climb--in these verses:
Up from the mists of marsh and fen,
Up from the gloom of the glen,
The mountains rise to kiss the skies,
They spurn the plain that lowly lies--
Up from the forest’s fitful shade,
Up to the heights that God hath made.
Up from the stains of sordid strife,
Up to a loftier life
My spirit cries, “Aspire! aspire!”
Climb we the heights from high to higher
Up, lest the fleeting daylight fade,
“Up!” is the law God hath laid.
(151)
See DISCONTENT, DIVINE; FOCUSING THE EYE.