No,--no,--no,--this is a changeling, and no child. The true brother's
blood cries to us from Baltimore. It rings out from the East where
Winthrop fell. It swells up from the West with Lyon's dirge. And all
along, from hill and valley and river-depths, where the soil is
drenched, and the waters are reddened, and nameless graves are
scattered,--cleaving clearly through the rattle of musketry, mingling
grandly with the "diapason of the cannonade," or floating softly up
under the silent stars, "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice"
ceases not to cry unto us day and night; its echoes linger tenderly and
tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal resonance
from mountain to sea-shore. The mother bends to it in her silent
watches. The soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creaking
cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, and takes up the
magnificent strain,--victorious, triumphant, exultant,--
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
Sweet and honorable is it for country to die.
THE UNSUCCESSFUL
The unsuccessful men are all around us; and among them are those who
confound all distinctions set up by society, and illustrate the great
law of compensation set up by God, cutting society at right angles, and
obtuse angles, and acute angles, unnoticed, or but flippantly mentioned
by the careless, but giving food for intimate reflections to those for
whom things suggest thoughts.
Have you not seen them,--these unsuccessful men?--men who seem not to
have found their niche, but are always on somebody's hands for
settlement, or, if settled, never at rest? If they are poor, their
neighbors say, Why does he not learn a trade? or, Why does he not stick
to his trade? He might be well off, if he were not so flighty. He has
a good head-piece, but he potters rhymes; he tricks out toy-engines and
knick-knacks; he roams about the woods gathering snakes and toads; and
meanwhile he is out at the elbows. If he is rich, they say, Why does
he not make a career? He has great resources. His brain is
inexhaustible. He is equipped for any emergency. There is nothing
which he might not attain, if he would only apply himself, but he
fritters himself away. He sticks to nothing. He touches on this, that,
and the other, and falls off.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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