Tag Archives: Courage

This Is Courage

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Courage

by Edgar Guest

This is courage: to remain
brave and patient under pain;
cool and calm and firm to stay
in the presence of dismay;
not to flinch when foes attack,
even though you’re beaten back;
still to cling to what is right,
when the wrong possesses might.

This is courage: to be true
to the best men see in you;
to remember, tempest-tossed
not to whimper, “All is lost!”
But to battle to the end
while you still have strength to spend;
not to cry that hope is gone
while you’ve life to carry on.

This is courage: to endure
hurt and loss you cannot cure;
patiently and undismayed,
facing life still unafraid;
glad to live and glad to take
bravely for your children’s sake
burdens they would have to bear
if you fled and ceased to care.

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Taken from the book, LIFE’S HIGHWAY
© 1933 by The Reilly & Britton Co.

Got Your Back, Pal

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The Friend Who Just Stands By

When troubles come your soul to try
you love the friend who just stands by.
Perhaps there’s nothing he can do;
the thing is strictly up to you

for there are troubles all your own
and paths the soul must tread alone,
bad times when love can’t smooth the road,
nor friendship lift the heavy load.

But just to feel you have a friend,
who will stand by until the end,
whose sympathy through all endures,
whose warm handclasp is always yours—

It helps somehow to pull you through,
although there’s nothing he can do.
And so with fervent heart we cry:
“God bless the friend who just stands by.”

Google tells me this poem was written by
William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963

The Neighborly Man

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by Edgar Guest

Men are of two kinds, and he
was of the kind I’d like to be.
Some preach their virtues, and a few
express their lives by what they do.
That sort was he. No flowery phrase
or glibly spoken words of praise
won friends for him. He wasn’t cheap
or shallow, but his course ran deep,
and it was pure. You know the kind;
Not many in a life you find
whose deeds outrun their words so far
that more that what they seem, they are.

There are two kinds of lies as well:
the kind you live, the ones you tell.
Back through his years from age to youth
he never acted one untruth.
Out in the open light he fought
and didn’t care what others thought
nor what they said about his fight
if he believed that he was right.
The only deeds he ever hid
were acts of kindness that he did.

What speech he had was plain and blunt;
his was an unattractive front.
Yet children loved him; babe and boy
played with the strength he could employ,
without one fear, and they are fleet
to sense injustice and deceit.

No back door gossip linked his name
with any shady tale of shame.
He did not have to compromise
with evil-doers, shrewd and wise,
and let them ply their vicious trade
because of some past escapade.

Men are of two kinds, and he
was of the kind I’d like to be.
No door at which he ever knocked
against his manly form was locked.
If ever man on earth was free
and independent, it was he.

No broken pledge lost him respect;
he met all men with head erect
and when He passed I think there went
a soul to yonder firmament
so white, so splendid and so fine
it came almost to God’s design.

from his book A Heap O’ Livin’
c 1916 by the Reilly & Britton Co.

Content With Who You Are

by

writing.girl

“Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some definite work; dare to be what you are, learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not, and to believe in your own individuality.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel

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Be the Best of Whatever You Are

by Douglas Malloch

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill
Be a scrub in the valley–but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway some happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass–
But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here.
There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do,
And the task we must do is the near.

If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail–
Be the best of whatever you are!