Character and Conduct Part 59

DECEMBER 27

"To grow old is more difficult than to die, because to renounce a good once and for all, costs less than to renew the sacrifice day by day and in detail. To bear with one's own decay, to accept one's own lessening capacity, is a harder and rarer virtue than to face death. There is a halo round tragic and premature death; there is but a long sadness in declining strength. But look closer: so studied, a resigned and religious old age will often move us more than the heroic ardour of young years. The maturity of the soul is worth more than the first brilliance of its faculties, or the plenitude of its strength, and the eternal in us can but profit from all the ravages made by time. There is comfort in this thought."

_Amiel's Journal._

"To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living."

_Amiel's Journal._

Old Age

DECEMBER 28

"We must not take the faults of our youth into our old age; for old age brings with it its own faults."

GOETHE.

"It is only to the finest natures that age gives an added beauty and distinction; for the most persistent self has then worked its way to the surface, having modified the expression, and to some extent, the features, to its own likeness."

MATHILDE BLIND.

"The most beautiful existence, it seems to me, would be that of a river which should get through all its rapids and waterfalls not far from its rising, and should then in its widening course form a succession of rich valleys, and in each of them a lake equally but diversely beautiful, to end, after the plains of age were past, in the ocean where all that is weary and heavy-laden comes to seek for rest."

_Amiel's Journal._

The Love and Grace and Tenderness of Life

DECEMBER 29

"Neither toil, nor the end of toil in oneself or in the world, is all vanity, in spite of the preacher; but there is enough vanity in both to make one sit loose to them. What seems to grow fairer to me as life goes by is the love and grace and tenderness of it; not its wit and cleverness and grandeur of knowledge--grand as knowledge is--but just the laughter of little children and the friends.h.i.+p of friends, the cosy talk by the fireside, the sight of flowers and the sound of music."

J. R. GREEN.

"Life is sweet, brother.... There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise the wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"

BORROW.

A Prayer

DECEMBER 30

"Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer; with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us a while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, brace us to play the man under affliction. Be with our friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any dream, be their dreams quiet; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns, return to us our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts--eager to labour--eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion--and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it."

_Vailima Prayers_, R. L. STEVENSON.

New Year's Eve

DECEMBER 31

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

"Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

"Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

"Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the n.o.bler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

"Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.

"Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing l.u.s.t of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

"Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be."

TENNYSON.