And he called you up to his golden throne,
Oh, wouldn’t you just be jolly proud?
If you had a friend like this, I say,
So sweet and tender, so strong and true,
You’d try to please him in every way,
You’d live at your bravest–now, wouldn’t you?
His worth would shine in the words you penned;
You’d shout his praises… yet now it’s odd!
You tell me you haven’t got such a friend;
You haven’t? I wonder… What of God?
To how few is granted the privilege of doing the work which lies closest to the heart, the work for which one is best fitted. The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
MacBean is not happy. He is overridden by his appetites, and to satisfy them he writes stuff that in his heart he despises.
Saxon Dane is not happy. His dream exceeds his grasp. His twisted, tortured phrases mock the vague grandiosity of his visions.
I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. I prefer the lesser poets to the greater, the cackle of the barnyard fowl to the scream of the eagle. I lack the divinity of discontent.
True Contentment comes from within. It dominates circumstance. It is resignation wedded to philosophy, a Christian quality seldom attained except by the old.
There is such an one I sometimes see being wheeled about in the Luxembourg. His face is beautiful in its thankfulness.
