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A Tale of the 'Evans, v. 3, issue 4, Fall 1945
Page 11
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PROGRESS Day by day the world grows better, Finer things may we command; Gone are many a chain and fetter Which held back our mind and hand. We have luxuries unnumbered That our fathers never knew; We are free where they were cumbered; Do great things they could not do. Nowadays each humble toiler May have joys undreamed of old; Things no king or great despoiler Could have bought with all his gold; Creature comforts for his pleasure That would drive Lucullus mad; Modern marvels without measure -- Have we reason to feel sad? We can span, in one day's journey, Distances that took a year; Held a thousand miles from here; Talk with friends across the ocean; Fly at will throughout the air; Gratify our slightest notion -- Is there reason to despair? Why more restless than our fathers, Less content, for all our luck; Do we find more trifling bothers; Have we less of faith and pluck? We may be, but this I'm doubting As I study by-gone ways, So I, gleefully, am shouting -- Never were there better days! And then there are the out and out sermons in verse; bits of advice given the readers about the topics of the day or the things that are being discussed throughout the land. Here the Newspaper Versifier blissfully "walks where angels fear to tread" in his little essays and sermons into realms where he has -- if he has a following at all -- his greatest opportunity to do something worthwhile for the race. That he actually does have a beneficent effect on a lot of people is easily verifiable by anyone who will take time to study the matter carefully. Again I dig into the scrapbook for one of my own bits that quite a number of people wrote or tole me was of help to them: FUTILITY O futile man! O foolish, heedless man, Who builds great telescopes with which to scan The heavens, search the secrets of each far-off nebulae, each moon, each star; Or studies, "neath a microscopic eye, The structure of the atom; sees cells die And ponders how they are re-born gain -- Are not these profound lessons learned in vain?
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PROGRESS Day by day the world grows better, Finer things may we command; Gone are many a chain and fetter Which held back our mind and hand. We have luxuries unnumbered That our fathers never knew; We are free where they were cumbered; Do great things they could not do. Nowadays each humble toiler May have joys undreamed of old; Things no king or great despoiler Could have bought with all his gold; Creature comforts for his pleasure That would drive Lucullus mad; Modern marvels without measure -- Have we reason to feel sad? We can span, in one day's journey, Distances that took a year; Held a thousand miles from here; Talk with friends across the ocean; Fly at will throughout the air; Gratify our slightest notion -- Is there reason to despair? Why more restless than our fathers, Less content, for all our luck; Do we find more trifling bothers; Have we less of faith and pluck? We may be, but this I'm doubting As I study by-gone ways, So I, gleefully, am shouting -- Never were there better days! And then there are the out and out sermons in verse; bits of advice given the readers about the topics of the day or the things that are being discussed throughout the land. Here the Newspaper Versifier blissfully "walks where angels fear to tread" in his little essays and sermons into realms where he has -- if he has a following at all -- his greatest opportunity to do something worthwhile for the race. That he actually does have a beneficent effect on a lot of people is easily verifiable by anyone who will take time to study the matter carefully. Again I dig into the scrapbook for one of my own bits that quite a number of people wrote or tole me was of help to them: FUTILITY O futile man! O foolish, heedless man, Who builds great telescopes with which to scan The heavens, search the secrets of each far-off nebulae, each moon, each star; Or studies, "neath a microscopic eye, The structure of the atom; sees cells die And ponders how they are re-born gain -- Are not these profound lessons learned in vain?
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