Life!  We’ve been long together,
  Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
  ’Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
  Perhaps will cost a sigh, a tear;
    Then steal away, give little warning,
  Choose thine own time;
  Say not “Good Night”—­but in some brighter clime,
    Bid me “Good Morning!”

Anna Barbauld.

LIFE AND DEATH

Many a man would die for wife and children, for faith, for country.  But would he live for them?  That, often, is the more heroic course—­and the more sensible.  A rich man was hiring a driver for his carriage.  He asked each applicant how close he could drive to a precipice without toppling over.  “One foot,” “Six inches,” “Three inches,” ran the replies.  But an Irishman declared, “Faith, and I’d keep as far away from the place as I could.”  “Consider yourself employed,” was the rich man’s comment.

  So he died for his faith.  That is fine—­
    More than most of us do. 
  But stay, can you add to that line
    That he lived for it, too?

  In death he bore witness at last
    As a martyr to truth. 
  Did his life do the same in the past
    From the days of his youth?

  It is easy to die.  Men have died
    For a wish or a whim—­
  From bravado or passion or pride. 
    Was it harder for him?

  But to live:  every day to live out
    All the truth that he dreamt,
  While his friends met his conduct with doubt,
    And the world with contempt—­

  Was it thus that he plodded ahead,
    Never turning aside? 
  Then we’ll talk of the life that he led—­
    Never mind how he died.

Ernest H. Crosby

From “Swords and Ploughshares.”

ON BEING READY

At nightfall after bloody Antietam Lee’s army, outnumbered and exhausted, lay with the Potomac at its back.  So serious was the situation that all the subordinate officers advised retreat.  But Lee, though too maimed to attack, would not leave the field save of his own volition.  “If McClellan wants a battle,” he declared, “he can have it.”  McClellan hesitated, and through the whole of the next day kept his great army idle.  The effect upon the morale of the two forces, and the two governments, can be imagined.

  The man who is there with the wallop and punch
    The one who is trained to the minute,
  May well be around when the trouble begins,
    But you seldom will find he is in it;
  For they let him alone when they know he is there
    For any set part in the ramble,
  To pick out the one who is shrinking and soft
    And not quite attuned to the scramble.