For those people who do nothing, for those to whom Christianity brings
no revelation, for those who see no eternity in time, no infinity in
life, for those to whom opportunity is but the hand maid of
selfishness, to whom smallness is informed by no greatness, for whom
the lowly is never lifted up by indwelling love to the heights of
divine performance,--for them, indeed, each hurrying year may well be a
King of Terrors. To pass out from the flooding light of the morning,
to feel all the dewiness drunk up by the thirsty, insatiate sun, to see
the shadows slowly and swiftly gathering, and no starlight to break the
gloom, and no home beyond the gloom for the unhoused, startled,
shivering soul,--ah! this indeed is terrible. The "confusions of a
wasted youth" strew thick confusions of a dreary age. Where youth
garners up only such power as beauty or strength may bestow, where
youth is but the revel of physical or frivolous delight, where youth
aspires only with paltry and ignoble ambitions, where youth presses the
wine of life into the cup of variety, there indeed Age comes, a thrice
unwelcome guest. Put him off. Thrust him back. Weep for the early
days: you have found no happiness to replace their joys. Mourn for the
trifles that were innocent, since the trifles of your manhood are heavy
with guilt. Fight to the last. Retreat inch by inch. With every step
you lose. Every day robs you of treasure. Every hour passes you over
to insignificance; and at the end stands Death. The bare and desolate
decline drops suddenly into the hopeless, dreadful grave, the black and
yawning grave, the foul and loathsome grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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