| | 1 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | LET me tell you a story of To-Day,—very
homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not
of the To-Day whose significance in the history
of humanity only those shall read who will
live when you and I are dead. We can bear
the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong
enough, while the nations of the earth stand
afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to
speak. I write from the border of the battlefield,
and I find in it no theme for shallow argument
or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death
has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No
child laughs in my face as I pass down the
street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten
to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance,
they say "in the morning, `Would God it were
even!' and in the evening, `Would God it were
morning!' '' Neither I nor you have the prophet's
vision to see the age as its meaning stands
written before God. Those who shall live when
we are dead may tell their children, perhaps,
how, out of anguish and darkness such as the
world seldom has borne, the enduring morning
evolved of the true world and the true man.
It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's
blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance,
the hackneyed cant of men, or the blood-thirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us
of the great To-Morrow of content and right
that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is
there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of
the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened
down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword
of the hour, renews the quiet promise of its
coming in simple, humble things. Let us go
down and look for it. There is no need that
we should feebly vaunt and madden ourselves
over our self-seen rights, whatever they may
be, forgetting what broken shadows they are
of eternal truths in that calm where He sits
and with His quiet hand controls us. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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