LIFE
IS DUTY
In a very short poem “Duty”, American poet Ellen S.Hooper
(1816-1841) says:
I slept and dreamed that life was
beauty: but that was wrong. It was a dream, not a reality. In the very second
line, she changes her concept about life and writes: I woke and found that life
was duty and finishes the poem with four more lines which read as:
Was then the dream a shadowy lie?
Toil
on, sad heart, courageously,
And
thou shalt find thy dream to be
A
noonday light and truth to thee.
Life, then, is not a beautiful dream
but noonday hard work. It is not sleep
but awakening. It is not beauty but duty, not restful sleep but but perspiring toil.
******
G.R.Kanwal
26 November 2023
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