United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Like the beacon-lights in harbours, which, kindling a great blaze by means of a few fagots, afford sufficient aid to vessels that wander over the sea, so, also, a man of bright character in a storm-tossed city, himself content with little, effects great blessings for his fellow-citizens."
The men and women who shine as beacon-lights across the centuries are those whose tears were their meat day and night, whose prayers rose with strong cryings and tears; while, as with Palissy, the Huguenot potter, the very furniture of the house was brought out to feed the flame in which the precious glaze was being precipitated.
Coleridge's prophetic moonshine, Torrijos's sad tragedy: those were important occurrences in Sterling's life. But, on the whole, there was a big Ocean for him, with impetuous Gulf-streams, and a doomed voyage in quest of the Atlantis, before either of those arose as lights on the horizon. As important beacon-lights let us count them nevertheless; signal-dates they form to us, at lowest.
But he let a gentle west wind blow, that it might carry me and my comrades to our home. For nine days it blew, and now we were near to Ithaca, our country, so that we saw the men that tended the beacon-lights, for it was now near to the dawn on the tenth day.
The atmosphere was soft and mild, the evening was perfect. The great sheet of water extended far to the east. On the south it was bounded by marshes. A long, low prairie coast stretched away on the north; it was the southern end of the state of Mississippi. The light-houses flashed their bright beacon-lights over the water. All was tranquil save the ever- pervading, persistent mosquito.
To talk with beacon-lights across five miles of foaming, heaving waters, when all around was dark and dreary! to flash from one sympathetic heart to another the glowing signals of intelligence comprehended by no other persons! would not that be an achievement which would not only give pleasure in the actual present performance of it, but also in the recollection of it throughout future years?
Go he had to, and it was plain to him that in striving to belittle Ray he had damaged his own cause. It made him bitterer still as he strode through the darkness down to the beacon-lights of the store. Gleason drank more and talked more before he went to bed than was good for him; but no seed is so easily sown as that of slander.
His voice was very gentle and subdued as he said: "I told you once, Alice, that my life should be opened to you, if ever its errors could be either warning or consolation to you. But who am I, to judge what beacon-lights we may hold out to each other? There is as much egotism, sometimes, in silence as in the free speech which asks for sympathy.
Without violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide stricken men and women into safe harbors. The "Invocation," written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death, reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the whole human race.
Then body and mind must be trained to endure a fearful weariness, to pass the days under such a stern pressure of toil that all loving, graceful interests shall be rooted out of the stony soil. You must be prepared to lose precious truths in a gulf of delusion, to leave all your old beacon-lights and wander forth in an eternal dark.
Word Of The Day