The Abhorred Shears

A little more than two months of infantry garrison with a unit infamous for raising hell and national publicity and what's left of my intentions is a skeleton of ideological naivete. Whatever honorable notions of service and duty I might have been loosely functioning under have steadily, with each passing celebratory weekend, been stripped down to the bare bones. We've tipped our glasses to our departure and dipped more than a heel in our depravity. Leaping headlong at lascivious impulses and streatching out our hides to be seared in the flames of fleeting indulgences.... I am left to believe that my service will be one of penence.

Alas! What boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse,
Were it not better don as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of Noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,
Phœbus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.


From Lycidas by John Milton