IT takes great strength to train

To modern service your ancestral brain;

To lift the weight of the unnumbered years

Of dead men’s habits, methods and ideas;

To hold that back with one hand, and support

With the other the weak steps of new resolve!

It takes great strength to bring your life up square

With your accepted thought, and hold it there,

Resisting the inertia that drags back

From new attempts to the old habit’s track.

It is so easy to drift back to sink—

So hard to live abreast of what you think!

It takes great strength to live where you belong,

When other people think that you are wrong;

People you love, and who love you, and whose

Approval is a pleasure you would choose.

To bear this pressure, and succeed at length

In living your belief well, it takes strength—

 Courage, too.

But what does courage mean

Save strength to help you face a pain foreseen;

Courage to undertake this life-long strain

Of setting yourself against your grandsire’s brain:

Dangerous risk of walking alone and free,

Out of the easy paths that used to be;

And the fierce pain of hurting those we love,

When love meets truth, and truth must ride above!

But the best courage man has ever shown,

 Is daring to cut loose, and think alone

Dark are the unlit chambers of clear space,

Where light shines back from no reflecting face.

Our sun’s wide glare, our heaven’s shining blue,

We owe to fog and dust they fumble through;

And our rich wisdom that we treasure so.

Shines from a thousand things that we don’t know.

But to think new—it takes a courage grim

As led Columbus over the world’s rim.

To think—it costs some courage—and to go—

Try it—it taxes every power you know.

It takes great love to stir a human heart

To live beyond the others, and apart;

A love that is not shallow, is not small;

Is not for one or two, but for them all.

Love that can wound love for its higher need;

Love that can leave love, though the heart may bleed;

Love that can lose love, family and friend,

Yet live steadfastly. loving to the end.

A love that asks no answer, that can live,

Moved by one burning, deathless force—to give!

Love, strength and courage; courage, strength and love—

 The heroes of all time are built thereof.

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