We all dream of being St. Georges and fighting dragons amid glamor and glory and the applause of the world. But our real fights are mostly commonplace, routine battles, where no great victory is ours at the end of the day. To persist in them requires quiet strength and unfaltering courage.

Did you ever want to take your two bare hands,
And choke out of the world your big success?
Beat, torn fists bleeding, pathways rugged, grand,
By sheer brute strength and bigness, nothing less?
So at the last, triumphant, battered, strong,
You might gaze down on what you choked and beat,
And say, "Ah, world, you've wrought to do me wrong;
And thus have I accepted my defeat."

Have you ever dreamed of virile deeds, and vast,
And then come back from dreams with wobbly knees,
To find your way (the braver vision past),
By picking meekly at typewriter keys;
By bending o'er a ledger, day by day,
By some machine-like drudging? No great woe
To grapple with. Slow, painful is the way,
And still, the bravest fight and conquer so.

Miriam Teichner.