The heights by great men reached and keptWere not attained by sudden flight,But they, while their companions slept,Were toiling upward in the night.
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died in 1882, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1893. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;—Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.Let us, then, be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.
OUT of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
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