Did you tackle the trouble that came your way

With a resolute heart and cheerful?

Or hide your face from the light of day

With a craven soul and fearful?

Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,

Or a trouble is what you make it,

And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,

But only how did you take it?

 

You’re beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that?

Come up with a smiling face.

It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,

But to lie there—that’s disgrace.

The harder you’re thrown, why, the higher you bounce;

Be proud of your blackened eye!

It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;

It’s how did you fight—and why?

 

And though you be done to death, what then?

If you battled the best you could,

If you played your part in the world of men,

Why, the Critic will call it good.

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,

And whether he’s slow or spry,

It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,

But only how did you die?

 

 Edmund Vance Cooke

So he died for his faith. That is fine—

More than most of us do.

But, stay, can you add to that line

That he lived for it, too?

 

In his death he bore witness at last

As a martyr to truth.

Did his life do the same in the past

From the days of his youth?

 

It is easy to die. Men have died

For a wish or a whim—

From bravado or passion or pride,

Was it harder for him?

 

But to live—every day to live out

All the truth that he dreamt,

While his friends met his conduct with doubt

And the world with contempt.

 

Was it thus that he plodded ahead,

Never turning aside?

Then we’ll talk of the life that he led,

Never mind how he died.

 

 Ernest Crosby

 

  

 

God is the brave man’s hope and not the coward’s excuse.

 

 Plutarch

 

  

 

The Spartans do not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.

 

 Agis II