Onatrainfromdelhi’s Blog

By: John

Jan 21 2011

Category: Uncategorized

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At one point in our history, the stories we told were about something.

Virtue and character inspired the doing of great deeds and the faithfulness to ordinary and everyday duty. Today, the grand majority of the stories we tell are founded on trivialities of the drama of our lives. Objection to the plots of many feature films and sitcoms revolving around drama in the lives or ordinary as well as extraordinary people is not that such drama is at all times fictitious of our own lives, often it is a mirror. Objection comes however when we desire to have children and neighbors who base their actions on virtue and character but the stories we marinate our lives in say nothing in support of such values.

The stories we tell our children and ourselves, do matter. We base our life’s perspective of reality character’s in books and movies. And if we tell stories that have noble characters, we will be more likely have children who grow up to live and act more similarly to the heroes and heroines of those stories. If we tell stories of in which the philanderers and womanizers are exalted and prostitutes are proclaimed as admirable and upstanding women, we will likely have children who grow up to be and procreate bastards and whores.

The poem that follows is the Village Blacksmith, by Longfellow. It is left to you and I to decide if we shall will to pay the high cost of raising a generation who will once again hear stories of valiant, the courageous, and the faithful.

The Village Blacksmith

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, -rejoicing, -sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its close!
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.