FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>   >|  
mas of the poets bring relief and incite to nobler action. "The soul hath need of prophet and redeemer. Her outstretched wings against her prisoning bars She waits for truth, and truth is with the dreamer Persistent as the myriad light of stars."[5] We need to listen to a poet like Browning, who-- "Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph. Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." In the fourth place, the twentieth century is emphasizing the fact that neither happiness nor perpetuity of government is possible without the development of a spirit of service,--a truth long since taught by English literature. We may learn this lesson from _Beowulf_, the first English epic, from Alfred the Great, from William Langland, and from Chaucer's _Parish Priest_. All Shakespeare's greatest and happiest characters, all the great failures of his dramas, are sermons on this text. In _The Tempest_ he presents Ariel, tendering his service to Prospero:-- "All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure." Shakespeare delights to show Ferdinand winning Miranda through service, and Caliban remaining an abhorred creature because he detested service. Much of modern literature is an illuminated text on the glory of service. Coleridge voiced for all the coming years what has grown to be almost an elemental feeling to the English-speaking race:-- "He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small." The Home and Migrations of the Anglo-Saxon Race.--Just as there was a time when no English foot had touched the shores of America, so there was a period when the ancestors of the English lived far away from the British Isles. For nearly four hundred years prior to the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain had been a Roman province. In 410 A.D. the Romans withdrew their legions from Britain to protect Rome herself against swarms of Teutonic invaders. About 449 a band of Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet (in the north-eastern part of Kent), and began the conquest of Britain. Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed, and drove westward the original inhabitants, the Britons or Welsh, _i.e._ foreigners, as the Teutons styled the natives. Before the invasion of Britain, the Teutons inhabited the central part of Europe as far s
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

English

 

service

 

Britain

 

Teutons

 

literature

 

Saxons

 

Shakespeare

 

coming

 

America

 
shores

period
 

ancestors

 

touched

 
voiced
 

Coleridge

 

detested

 
modern
 

illuminated

 
elemental
 

feeling


Migrations
 

things

 

loveth

 

speaking

 

prayeth

 

province

 

Angles

 

tribes

 

westward

 

Warriors


conquest

 

Thanet

 

eastern

 
original
 

inhabitants

 

Before

 

natives

 
invasion
 

inhabited

 
Europe

central
 
styled
 

foreigners

 

Britons

 

landed

 

withdrew

 

Romans

 

hundred

 
legions
 

called