Project Gutenberg's The Philosophy of Despair, by David Starr Jordan

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Title: The Philosophy of Despair

Author: David Starr Jordan

Posting Date: September 4, 2009 [EBook #4754]
Release Date: December, 2003
First Posted: March 12, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESPAIR ***

Produced by David A. Schwan. HTML version by Al Haines.

The Philosophy of Despair

by

David Starr Jordan

To
John Maxson Stillman
In Token of Good Cheer

A darkening sky and a whitening sea,
And the wind in the palm trees tall;
Soon or late comes a call for me,
Down from the mountain or up from the sea,
Then let me lie where I fall.

And a friend may write--for friends there be,
On a stone from the gray sea wall,
"Jungle and town and reef and sea--
I loved God's Earth and His Earth loved me,
Taken for all in all."

Today is your day and mine, the only day we have, the day in which we
play our part. What our part may signify in the great whole, we may not
understand, but we are here to play it, and now is our time. This we
know, it is a part of action, not of whining. It is a part of love, not
cynicism. It is for us to express love in terms of human helpfulness.
This we know, for we have learned from sad experience that any other
course of life leads toward decay and waste.

The Philosophy of Despair

The Bubbles of Saki.

From Fitzgerald's exquisite version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, I
take the following quatrains which may serve as a text for what I have
to say:

So when the angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And offering you his cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your lips to quaff, you shall not shrink.

Why, if the soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the air of Heaven ride,
Wert not a shame--wert not a shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?

'Tis but a tent where takes his one-day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.

And