Rejoice, and men will seek you;
  Grieve, and they turn and go;
    They want full measure
    Of all your pleasure,
  But they do not want your woe.

  Be glad, and your friends are many;
  Be sad, and you lose them all;
    There are none to decline
    Your nectared wine,
  But alone you must drink life’s gall.

  Feast, and your halls are crowded;
  Fast, and the world goes by;
    Succeed and give,
    And it helps you live,
  But it cannot help you die.

  There is room in the halls of pleasure
  For a long and lordly train;
    But one by one
    We must all file on
  Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

From “How Salvator Won.”

UNSUBDUED

“An artist’s career,” said Whistler, “always begins to-morrow.”  So does the career of any man of courage and imagination.  The Eden of such a man does not lie in yesterday.  If he has done well, he forgets his achievements and dreams of the big deeds ahead.  If he has been thwarted, he forgets his failures and looks forward to vast, sure successes.  If fate itself opposes him, he defies it.  Farragut’s fleet was forcing an entrance into Mobile Bay.  One of the vessels struck something, a terrific explosion followed, the vessel went down.  “Torpedoes, sir.”  They scanned the face of the commander-in-chief.  But Farragut did not hesitate.  “Damn the torpedoes,” said he.  “Go ahead.”

  I have hoped, I have planned, I have striven,
    To the will I have added the deed;
  The best that was in me I’ve given,
    I have prayed, but the gods would not heed.

  I have dared and reached only disaster,
    I have battled and broken my lance;
  I am bruised by a pitiless master
    That the weak and the timid call Chance.

  I am old, I am bent, I am cheated
    Of all that Youth urged me to win;
  But name me not with the defeated,
    To-morrow again, I begin.

S.E.  Kiser.

From “Poems That Have Helped Me.”

WORK

“A SONG OF TRIUMPH”

When Captain John Smith was made the leader of the colonists at Jamestown, Va., he discouraged the get-rich-quick seekers of gold by announcing flatly, “He who will not work shall not eat.”  This rule made of Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in the New World.  But work does more than lead to material success.  It gives an outlet from sorrow, restrains wild desires, ripens and refines character, enables human beings to cooperate with God, and when well done, brings to life its consummate satisfaction.  Every man is a Prince of Possibilities, but by work alone can he come into his Kingship.

  Work! 
  Thank God for the might of it,
  The ardor, the urge, the delight of it—­
  Work that springs from the heart’s desire,
  Setting the brain and the soul on fire—­
  Oh, what is so good as the heat of it,
  And what is so glad as the beat of it,
  And what is so kind as the stern command,
  Challenging brain and heart and hand?