Augustine Redux

 Well, I hadn't intended to talk about Augustine again, and actually, I'm not.  Someone else is.  I'm still into Longfellow these days and came across his "Ladder of St. Augustine."  So, of course, I felt that I had to set it down here.

*********************************************************************************

St. Augustine! well hast thou said,
   That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
   Beneath our feet each deed of shame.

All common things, each day's events,
   That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
   Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,
   That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the ruddy wine,
   and all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;
   The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings
   Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
   That have their roots in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
   The action of the nobler will; -

All these must first be trampled down
   Beneath our feet, if we should gain
 In the bright fields of fair renown
   The right of eminnent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;
   But we have feet to scale and climb
 By slow degrees, by more and more,
   The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone
   That wedge-like cleave the desert airs
When nearer seen, and better known,
   Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear
   Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
   As we to higher levels rise.

  The heights by great men reached and kept
   Were not attained by sudden flight,
 But they, while their companions slept,
   Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore
   With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern - unseen before -
   A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem irrevocable Past
   As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
   To something nobler we attain.

        -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
who obviously read Augustine's Confessions

9/19/11