The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals - Brett McKay [19]
Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter’d & sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
“Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power of the will. Courage is willpower.” —Lord Moran
A classified ad said to have been placed in a London newspaper by Ernest Shackleton, explorer of the Antarctic, before his Nimrod expedition in 1908.
“All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne
Why Direct Action?
FROM “LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL,” 1963
By Martin Luther King Jr.
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference staged a civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. Using non-violent, direct action tactics such as marches and sit-ins, activists sought to bring national attention to the discrimination in what was then considered the most segregated city in America. Protestors, including King, who ignored the city’s injunction against the campaign were jailed in mass arrests. When eight white Alabama clergymen issued a statement which criticized the Birmingham campaign for stirring up unrest and called for a more patient, slower approach to gaining civil rights, King penned this open letter, passionately defending his methods, explaining the need to move forward, and arguing that breaking unjust laws constituted an act of great moral courage.
16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. … But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I