Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber;
Body shall cumber
Soul flight no more.
To the external eye there is no great difference in men. Some are tall, some are short, some are heavy, some are light, some are slow, and some are quick of movement. We soon learn that the real size of men is not measured by their height, or their weight, or the alertness or slowness of their movements. A physical giant may be a very little man in intellectual or in moral quality, and a man of very small statue may be great in the things which make real manhood.
The actual measurement of life is not therefore determined by the weigher’s scales, or by the tailor’s patterns, but by qualities of mind and heart. When we are exhorted to enlarge our life, it is not meant that we shall increase our stature or add pounds to our weight, but that we shall grow in the things that make character, that give power, that add influence. There is always room for such enlarging. The possibilities are simply immeasurable. No man is ever so good that he cannot be better. No one has ever attained so worthy a character that he cannot be worthier. No one is ever so noble a friend but he can become nobler. Richard Watson Gilder puts this truth in a beautiful way in a little poem:
“Yesterday, when we were friends,
We were scarcely friends at all;
Now we have been friends so long,
Now our love has grown so strong.
“When tomorrow’s eve shall fall
We shall say, as night descends,
Again shall say: Ah, yesterday
Scarcely were we friends at all–
Now we have been friends so long;
Our love has grown so deep, so strong.”
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