My poem of the week this week is another selection from Edgar Guest. My boys are to recite it this morning.
“Determination”
I’ll see it through, whate’er the danger be.
One death is all that God assigns to me.
I’ll stand erect against the odds and shout:
“I may be whipped, but will not turn about!”I will not play the coward! Fail I may,
But at the post of duty I will stay.
Nor dread of loss, nor fear of being hurt,
Nor softening pride shall tempt me to desert.I’ll play the man! What if the way seems long?
I will not whimper that all care is wrong.
Blunder I may, but none shall ever cry
I died a failure, since I would not try.-from Life’s Highway, by Edgar A. Guest (Chicago: The Reilly and Lee Co., 1933), 28