The Pleasures of Life | Page 3

songs are those that
tell of saddest thought." [2]
As a nation we are prone to melancholy. It has been said of our
countrymen that they take even their pleasures sadly. But this, if it be
true at all, will, I hope, prove a transitory characteristic. "Merry
England" was the old saying, let us hope it may become true again. We
must look to the East for real melancholy. What can be sadder than the
lines with which Omar Khayyam opens his quatrains: [3]
"We sojourn here for one short day or two, And all the gain we get is
grief and woe; And then, leaving life's problems all unsolved And
harassed by regrets, we have to go;"
or the Devas' song to Prince Siddârtha, in Edwin Arnold's beautiful
version:
"We are the voices of the wandering wind, Which moan for rest, and
rest can never find. Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life-- A moan, a
sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."
If indeed this be true, if mortal life be so sad and full of suffering, no
wonder that Nirvâna--the cessation of sorrow--should be welcomed
even at the sacrifice of consciousness.
But ought we not to place before ourselves a very different ideal--a
healthier, manlier, and nobler hope?
Life is not to live merely, but to live well. There are some "who live
without any design at all, and only pass in the world like straws on a
river: they do not go; they are carried," [4]--but as Homer makes
Ulysses say, "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rest
unburnished; not to shine in use--as though to breathe were life!"
Goethe tells us that at thirty he resolved "to work out life no longer by
halves, but in all its beauty and totality."

"Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen Resolut zu leben."
Life indeed must be measured by thought and action, not by time. It
certainly may be, and ought to be, bright, interesting, and happy; and,
according to the Italian proverb, "if all cannot live on the Piazza, every
one may feel the sun."
If we do our best; if we do not magnify trifling troubles; if we look
resolutely, I do not say at the bright side of things, but at things as they
really are; if we avail ourselves of the manifold blessings which
surround us; we cannot but feel that life is indeed a glorious
inheritance.
"More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of. In every path He
treads down that which doth befriend him When sickness makes him
pale and wan Oh mighty Love! Man is one world, and hath Another to
attend him." [5]
Few of us, however, realize the wonderful privilege of living, or the
blessings we inherit; the glories and beauties of the Universe, which is
our own if we choose to have it so; the extent to which we can make
ourselves what we wish to be; or the power we possess of securing
peace, of triumphing over pain and sorrow.
Dante pointed to the neglect of opportunities as a serious fault:
"Man can do violence To himself and his own blessings, and for this
He, in the second round, must aye deplore, With unavailing penitence,
his crime. Whoe'er deprives himself of life and light In reckless
lavishment his talent wastes, And sorrows then when he should dwell
in joy."
Ruskin has expressed this with special allusion to the marvellous
beauty of this glorious world, too often taken as a matter of course, and
remembered, if at all, almost without gratitude. "Holy men," he
complains, "in the recommending of the love of God to us, refer but
seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and immediately
shown; though they insist much on His giving of bread, and raiment,

and health (which He gives to all inferior creatures): they require us not
to thank Him for that glory of His works which He has permitted us
alone to perceive: they tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they
send us not, like Isaac, into the fields at even: they dwell on the duty of
self denial, but they exhibit not the duty of delight:" and yet, as he
justly says elsewhere, "each of us, as we travel the way of life, has the
choice, according to our working, of turning all the voices of Nature
into one song of rejoicing; or of withering and quenching her sympathy
into a fearful withdrawn silence of condemnation,--into a crying out of
her stones and a shaking of her dust against us."
Must we not all admit, with Sir Henry Taylor, that "the retrospect of
life swarms with lost opportunities"? "Whoever enjoys not life," says
Sir T. Browne, "I count him but an