Charlotte Perkins Stetson writes of an experience in the following
lines:
It takes great strength to train
To modern service your ancestral brain;
To lift the weight of the unnumbered years
Of dead men’s habits, methods, and ideas;
To hold that back with one hand, and support
With the other the weak steps of the new thought.
It takes great strength to bring your life up square
With your accepted thought and hold it there;
Resisting the inertia that drags back
From new attempts to the old habit’s track.
It is so easy to drift back, to sink;
So hard to live abreast of what you think.
But the best courage man has ever shown
Is daring to cut loose and think alone.
Dark are the unlit chambers of clear space
Where light shines back from no reflecting face.
Our sun’s wide glare, our heaven’s shining blue,
We owe to fog and dust they fumble through;
And our rich wisdom that we treasure so
Shines from the thousand things that we don’t know.
But to think new--it takes a courage grim
As led Columbus over the world’s rim.
To think it cost some courage. And to go--
Try it. It takes every power you know.
(1619)