A Nation's Strength

 What makes a nation's pillars high

And its foundations strong?

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand

Go down in battle shock;

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,

Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust

Of empires passed away;

The blood has turned their stones to rust,

Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown

Has seemed to nations sweet;

But God has struck its luster down

In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make

A people great and strong;

Men who for truth and honor's sake

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,

Who dare while others fly...

They build a nation's pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

William Ralph Emerson

in, Our Little Kings and Queens at Home and at School 

Polarity

 

Polarity, 

or action and reaction, 

we meet in every part of nature; 

in darkness and light, 

in heat and cold, 

in the ebb and flow of waters, 

in male and female, 

in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; 

in the equation of quantity and quality 

in the fluids of the animal body; 

in the systole and diasystole of the human heart; 

in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; 

in electricity, 

galvanism 

and 

chemical affinity.  

– Ralph Waldo Emerson