The Strenuous Life / The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)


THE WORKS OF

Theodore Roosevelt

IN FOURTEEN VOLUMES,

Illustrated

The Strenuous Life

Executive Edition

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
PRESIDENT THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
WITH THE CENTURY CO., MESSRS. CHARLES
SCRIBNER’S SONS, AND G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

NEW YORK
P. F. COLLIER & SON, PUBLISHERS

12


Copyright 1900
By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY

Copyright 1900
By THE CHURCHMAN COMPANY

Copyright 1899
By THE S. S. McCLURE COMPANY

Copyright 1899, 1900, 1901
By THE CENTURY COMPANY


How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
... My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,—
    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”

Ja! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben,
Dass ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss;
Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben,
Der tÄglich sie erobern muss.
Und so verbringt, umrungen von Gefahr,
Hier Kindheit, Mann und Greis sein tÜchtig Jahr.
Solch’ ein Gewimmel mÖcht’ ich sehn,
Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn.

Goethe’s “Faust.”

Executive Mansion, Albany, N. Y.
September, 1900.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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