Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Poems >>
Heroism

    It takes great strength to train
    To modern service your ancestral brain;
    To lift the weight of the unnumbered years
    Of dead men's habits, methods, and ideas;
    To hold that back with one hand, and support
    With the other the weak steps of the new thought.

    It takes great strength to bring your life up square
    With your accepted thought and hold it there;
    Resisting the inertia that drags back
    From new attempts to the old habit's track.
    It is so easy to drift back, to sink;
    So hard to live abreast of what you think.

    It takes great strength to live where you belong
    When other people think that you are wrong;
    People you love, and who love you, and whose
    Approval is a pleasure you would choose.
    To bear this pressure and succeed at length
    In living your belief--well, it takes strength,

    And courage, too. But what does courage mean
    Save strength to help you face a pain foreseen?
    Courage to undertake this lifelong strain
    Of setting yours against your grand-sire's brain;
    Dangerous risk of walking lone and free
    Out of the easy paths that used to be,
    And the fierce pain of hurting those we love
    When love meets truth, and truth must ride above.

    But the best courage man has ever shown
    Is daring to cut loose and think alone.
    Dark are the unlit chambers of clear space
    Where light shines back from no reflecting face.
    Our sun's wide glare, our heaven's shining blue,
    We owe to fog and dust they fumble through;
    And our rich wisdom that we treasure so
    Shines from the thousand things that we don't know.
    But to think new--it takes a courage grim
    As led Columbus over the world's rim.
    To think it cost some courage. And to go--
    Try it. It takes every power you know.

    It takes great love to stir the human heart
    To live beyond the others and apart.
    A love that is not shallow, is not small,
    Is not for one or two, but for them all.
    Love that can wound love for its higher need;
    Love that can leave love, though the heart may bleed;
    Love that can lose love, family and friend,
    Yet steadfastly live, loving, to the end.
    A love that asks no answer, that can live
    Moved by one burning, deathless force--to give.
    Love, strength, and courage; courage, strength, and love.
    The heroes of all time are built thereof.