Large Fierce Mammal

Welcome back Goode Reader! Having made it thus far in this season of Dark Sentiments, it will come as no surprise to you that the poems I’ve strewn here in the course of the past two days, The Evil That Men Do and Then, are closely related.

The darkness encroaches, many a long Winter’s night lies before us that some won’t see the end of; and he is a meagre creature indeed who trusts outcomes to those forked tongues that wag in lofty halls. If you resemble that remark, here is a little Truth for you — it has always been, and forever will be, thus.

“In 1866, a book was published titled Readings for Young Men, Merchants, and Men of Business. Fortunately for the world, this tome has been unearthed and scanned by Google bringing it back just in time to prove my point.

“This is a world of excuses where everybody needs to have one foot over the safety line and nobody can imagine any reason for ever working without a net. Achievers are looked on not so much as people to be celebrated as they are held in suspicion of rudely flaunting their gifts just to make the less motivated or adept feel bad about themselves. People aren’t responsible for what happens in their lives because it’s always someone else’s fault, and a person’s actions, no matter how vile and base, are reduced to unfortunate manifestations of some ‘syndrome’ or ‘disorder’. The evil that men do has been supplanted by the sicknesses men have, and the unfortunate outcomes of bad choices cannot be spoken aloud lest one be adjudged a blamer of ‘victims’.

“So now, back from the void, comes this, on the subject of ‘ENERGETIC MEN’:

‘We love upright, energetic men. Pull them this way, and then that way, and the other, and they only bend, but never break. Trip them down, and in a trice they are on their feet. Bury them in the mud, and in an hour they will be out and bright. They are not ever yawning away existence, or walking about the world as if they had come into it with only half their soul; you cannot keep them down; you cannot destroy them. But for these the world would soon degenerate. They are the salt of the earth. Who but they start any noble project? They build our cities and rear our manufactories; they whiten the ocean with their sails, and they blacken the heavens with the smoke of their steam-vessels and furnace fires; they draw treasures from the mine; they plow the earth. Blessings on them! Look to them, young men, and take courage; imitate their example; catch the spirit of their energy and enterprise, and you will deserve, and no doubt command, success.’

Bring this forward out of the day when men were thought to be doing most of the moving and shaking, look at the references to blackening the heavens and mining the earth as being what they actually represent; metaphors for the actions of people who will commit themselves passionately to a worthy enterprise, even in the face of ridicule, injury, death, financial ruin, or even, Gods forbid, getting dirty. ~ What You Don’t Know …“

Courtesy of none other than The History Guy, I will offer the two short treatments that follow for your consideration. Two shining examples of Sir Winston Churchill’s advice — “If you are going through hell, keep going.”

Rudyard Kipling and Sir Evelyn Wood were both Men of their times, striving as do we all for what personal perfection might be found within themselves in an imperfect world.