Glimpses of the Great
Glimpses of the Great
By James A. Langley
A cornucopia to us is given
In music, deeds, and tales well told,
By which with diligence our lives may fold
True riches by the gifted who have greatly striven.
With soul fire and courage they countered the odds
Undeterred by low counsel of a well-meaning friend,
Or opposition regardless how it might descend,
And seized the challenges as stirring prods.
Whether the past abides as weight or wings,
Bringing loss or a gain to nature and man,
Much depends through all on one’s aim and élan,
From the source imbibing whence all good springs.
Man’s full measure, the moods we shun or hold dear,
From ways of commoners to kings, dazzlingly discern,
The ages his wit and wisdom confirm,
And hail with wonder the mastery of Shakespeare.
A genius from youth in math and science,
Pascal’s brilliant pensées, his compassion for the poor,
His passion for truth, and exemplar of the pure,
Make him a true guide for the ultimate, with prescience.
What insights Tolstoy reveals of life and death!
Quest unceasing for a healing means in a hidden lair,
Madame Curie yielded not to danger or despair;
And Lincoln inspires to our last breath.
Thrice trapped by darkness in a hopeless world,
Anne Sullivan enabled her to break free from the dark,
“The greatest woman since Joan of Arc,”
Judged Clemens of Helen Keller, who made a shining world.
The only da Vinci painting in America depicts its due,
Ginevra’s reverse side a Leonardo still life,
While she portrays the genius’s rife
Solomonic gift of beauty through virtue.
In Wilberforce’s small, sickly frame a great heart beat
To rid the world of the scourge of trade
In slaves; the power of Parliament he made
To serve this noble end in a towering feat.
Vivaldi forgotten! Blessed rediscovery!
J.S. Bach, moved profoundly by the master,
Composing in his style, making our wealth the vaster,
Reviving his driving rhythm and rhapsodic melody.
The courage of Niemoeller to stand
Against Hitler will forever shine and inspire,
Resistance where oppressors conspire,
The action which justice and freedom demand.
Convinced that much disease is microbe borne, he persevered;
Pasteur was scorned, and attacked with derision,
Creating vaccines, he was threatened with prison,
Even death, but through cures he became revered.
Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance is a fount
Of wisdom as she holds the balance before
A painting of The Last Judgment to underscore
Weighing this life for the ultimate account.
Soul-stirred by suffering on an epic scale,
Clara Barton plunged into the maelstrom
Of civil war, cherished for aid and comfort from
The Union Army’s Nightingale.
Continuously in the cross-hairs of fervid racists,
Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously persevered
Non-violently in his rights dream until martyred,
Seminally advancing the liberation of all races.
When law is perverted by beliefs bizarre,
A bishop’s compassion transforms a Jean Valjean,
As Victor Hugo vivifies the tragic yet hopeful scene,
Never has the light from candlesticks shone so far!
Emily Dickinson, unrecognized in her time,
Breaking old forms, and many things defining,
Widely held as a paragon of poetic opining,
Her bravura compelling, she set a new clime.
With rare and clear vision he saw the hell
Of war and carnage fueled by his creation,
From which wealth he now advances every nation
Through coveted awards bearing his name Nobel.
Marked by compassion and courage of the highest order,
Raoul Wallenberg, a wealthy Swedish diplomat,
Saved thousands of Hungarian Jews; after the apparat
Of the Soviets arrested him, he vanished beyond the border.
Malala Yousafzai, youthful icon of courage,
Shot at eleven because she attended school,
Seeks feminine education worldwide as the rule,
Bravely undermining anti-feminist rage.
In beauty gloriously exalting the great price pearl,
Handel’s Messiah, with sacred texts, is as near perfection,
Drawing believers and seekers to the Savior’s reception,
As only the highest music may offer in this world.
Out of poverty, growing deafness, his mother’s death
And father’s drunkenness, the music of Beethoven,
Profound in depth and range, titanically driven,
Enrapturing, conveys the aura of divine breath.
With the world in peril, Churchill rose to the fore,
Defeatism, surrender, not in his lexicon,
His language eloquent and riveting to the host he won,
As Britain stood alone, he gave the lion’s roar.
Enduring more than a quarter century
In a harsh prison, Nelson Mandela would mold
His nation, and far beyond, for ages to behold,
Toward justice, with magnanimity.
Defying stupendous odds, Wilbur and Orville Wright
Doggedly persist, with extraordinary skill
Mastering wing design, proved at Kill Devil Hill,
At high risk, becoming the first in powered flight.
From early attic experiments, Marconi would astound,
Using advances in electro-magnetism to explore
New ventures, he successfully connected ships to shore,
Then the race by wireless and radio, with world renown.
Relativity theories by the genius Einstein,
His probes of light, famed energy equation,
Unified field insight, and space-time relation,
Ushered in the atomic age, for good or evil design.
Brilliant line of pathbreakers, of dreamer and achiever mind,
Forerunners for Neil Armstrong and crew of Apollo Eleven
In their epic landing on the moon, forever graven
In heroic history as ‘one giant leap for mankind’.
Late coming to faith, C. S. Lewis, a Medieval
And Renaissance authority, by joy surprised,
Presenting the faith profoundly, winsomely disguised;
Christianity he merely shows without a rival.
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