Explore "Hammer Away" by Ruth Collie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Watching the blacksmith, were you, son? Watching the way his work is / done. Muscle is needed and also brain. Hammer, and hammer, and / hammer again, striking the blow, tirelessly, true. Fashioned at last / the perfect shoe. Wasn't done quickly, lad, admit; persistence / needed and strength and grit. That is the way we all must work (no / use tiring nor trying to shirk). Not for an hour, not for a day; nor / for a week, nor month, nor year; just how long no one can say (keep / on, laddie, success is near), hammer away, boy, hammer away. Look / how ambition's sparks are flying (Splendid! laddie, just keep on / trying), fashion your dream on the anvil, duty; mould and hammer it / into beauty. You are a smith; your anvil, life. Keep swinging the / hammer, despite all strife. Honest your purpose, stroke that is / true; joy in the thing you are trying to do; ambition's flame for the / smithy's fire, lit by the strength of a great desire. Then noble the / work, at the end of the day -- hammer away, lad, hammer away.