Source: Things Fall Apart
“How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?”
To America, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
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Do you have more details about the quote "How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing em…" by James Weldon Johnson?
James Weldon Johnson 23
writer and activist 1871–1938Related quotes
John Calvin
(1509–1564) French Protestant reformer
Page 23.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)
“Nor sink those stars in empty night:
They hide themselves in heaven's own light.”
James Montgomery
(1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet
Friends.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.”
Tom Clancy
(1947–2013) American author
Van Morrison
(1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician
Moondance
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)
Antonin Artaud
(1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director
Source: The Theater and Its Double
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 193
Context: Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. To the one, it is all beauty and gladness; the waves of ocean roll in light, and the mountains are covered with day. Life, to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon every flower and every tree that trembles in the breeze. There is more to him, everywhere, than the eye sees; a presence of profound joy, on hill and valley, and bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully gazes at the same scene, and everything wears a dull, dim, and sickly aspect. The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar of the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music of the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness, the cheerful light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The great train of the seasons passes before him like a funeral procession; and he sighs, and turns impatiently away. The eye makes that which it looks upon; the ear makes its own melodies and discords: the world without reflects the world within.
