Oh, Give Us The Man Who Sings

Alas! We Know That Ideals Can Never Be Completely Embodied In Practice. Ideals Must Ever Lie A Great Way Off--and We Will Thankfully Content Ourselves With Any Not Intolerable Approximation Thereto! Let No Man, As Schiller Says, Too Querulously "measure By A Scale Of Perfection The Meager Product Of Reality" In This Poor World Of Ours.

Happy Season Of Childhood! Kind Nature, That Art To All A Bountiful Mother; That Visitest The Poor Man's Hut With Auroral Radiance; And For Thy Nursling Hast Provided A Soft Swathing Of Love And Infinite Hope Wherein He Waxes And Slumbers, Danced Round By Sweetest Dreams!

Parliament Will Train You To Talk; And Above All Things To Hear, With Patience, Unlimited Quantities Of Foolish Talk.

Are We Not Spirits, That Are Shaped Into A Body, Into An Appearance; And That Fade Away Again Into Air And Invisibility? Oh, Heaven, It Is Mysterious, It Is Awful To Consider That We Not Only Carry A Future Ghost Within Us; But Are, In Very Deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, Whence Had We Them; This Stormy Force; This Life-blood With Its Burning Passion? They Are Dust And Shadow; A Shadow-system Gathered Round Our Me; Wherein, Through Some Moments Or Years, The Divine Essence Is To Be Revealed In The Flesh.

Silence Is The Eternal Duty Of Man.