CLASSICS OF INSPIRATION

 

 

A Psalm of Life
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG
MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

 

IF

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

 

Excerpt from
The Ladder of St. Augustine

The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight-
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING

Popularly known as
THE NEGRO NATIONAL ANTHEM

by James Weldon Johnson (1900) 

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won. 


Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.


God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

Good, Better, Best

Good, better, best. Never let it rest.
Till your good is better and your better best.

St. Jerome

 

Killing Time

As if we could kill time without injuring eternity.

Henry David Thoreau

 

 

Don’t Blame It On The Children

Author Unknown

 Y’know we read in the paper and we hear on the air

Of killing and stealing and crime everywhere

And we sigh and we say as we notice the trend

This young generation, where will it end

But can we be sure that it’s their fault alone

I mean that maybe a part of it isn’t our own

Are we less guilty who place in their way

Too many things that lead them astray

 

Like too much money

Too much idle time

Too many movies of passion and crime

Too many books that are not even fit to be read

Too much evil in what they hear said

and too many children encouraged to roam

By too many parents who won’t even stay home

 

Well! Kids don’t make the movies

and they don’t write the books

They don’t paint gay pictures of gangsters and crooks

They don’t make the liquor and they don’t run the bars

They don’t make the laws and they don’t buy the cars

They don’t make the junk that addles the brain

That’s all done by older folk, greedy for gain

 

Delinquent teenagers? How we condemn

The sins of a nation and blame it on them

But the laws that are blameless the Savior makes known

Now you tell me who’s here among us to cast the first stone

In so many cases it’s sad but it’s true

The title DELINQUENT Fits older folk too

So don’t blame it on the children!

Quotes from Mahatma Gandhi

"There is more to life than increasing speed."
-Mohandas K. Gandhi  

"There is enough for the needy, but not for the greedy". 

The slave clings to his chains and he must have them struck from him. 

Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): "Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea.". ...