OPPORTUNITY What is opportunity? To the brilliant mind of Senator Ingalls it is a stupendous piece of luck. It comes once and once only to every human being, wise or foolish, good or wicked. If it be not perceived on the instant, it passes by forever. No longing for it, no effort, can bring it back. Notice that this view is fatalistic; it makes opportunity an external thing--one that enriches men or leaves their lives empty without much regard to what they deserve.
Master of human destinies am I!
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel and mart and palace--soon or late
I knock, unbidden, once at every gate!
If sleeping, wake--if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore.
I answer not, and I return no more!
John James Ingalls.
OPPORTUNITY
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
William Shakespeare.
OPPORTUNITY
To the thought of the preceding poem we have here a direct answer. No matter how a man may have failed in the past, the door of opportunity is always open to him. He should not give way to useless regrets; he should know that the future is within his control, that it will be what he chooses to make it.
They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.
Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn the records of the day,--
At sunrise every soul is born again!
Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.
Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say 'I can!'
No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep,
But yet might rise and be again a man!
Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past,
And find the future's pages white as snow.
