BE THE BEST OF WHATEVER YOU ARE

We all dream of great deeds and high positions, away from the pettiness and humdrum of ordinary life.  Yet success is not occupying a lofty place or doing conspicuous work; it is being the best that is in you.  Rattling around in too big a job is much worse than filling a small one to overflowing.  Dream, aspire by all means; but do not ruin the life you must lead by dreaming pipe-dreams of the one you would like to lead.  Make the most of what you have and are.  Perhaps your trivial, immediate task is your one sure way of proving your mettle.  Do the thing near at hand, and great things will come to your hand to be done.

  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!

Douglas Malloch.

THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

This poem has as its keynote friendship and sympathy for other people.  It is a paradox of life that by hoarding love and happiness we lose them, and that only by giving them away can we keep them for ourselves.  The more we share, the more we possess.  We of course find in other people weaknesses and sins, but our best means of curing these are through a wise and sympathetic understanding.

  Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
    Where the race of men go by—­
  The men who are good and the men who are bad,
    As good and as bad as I.
  I would not sit in the scorner’s seat,
    Or hurl the cynic’s ban;—­
  Let me live in a house by the side of the road
    And be a friend to man.

  I see from my house by the side of the road,
    By the side of the highway of life,
  The men who press with the ardor of hope,
    The men who are faint with the strife. 
  But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears—­
    Both parts of an infinite plan;—­
  Let me live in my house by the side of the road
    And be a friend to man.

  I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
    And mountains of wearisome height;
  And the road passes on through the long afternoon
    And stretches away to the night. 
  But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
    And weep with the strangers that moan,
  Nor live in my house by the side of the road
    Like a man who dwells alone.