Good Lord… Well, the list I have in mind would take too long to write out – it could number as many as 100 in the next hour. Rather than rattle off a mere list (at the moment anyway) I’ll first qualify my “yardstick of greatness” and define it at least partly by these lines. I did not write them, but wish I had, for they go so far in defining “greatness” as to be great themselves:
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
...............
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
-Stephen Spender
Among the names suggested to me in these lines are Washington, Adams, Jefferson and more – politicians all and statesmen some.
Two that come to mind in the legal field are Marshall, and old Webster – him who said in defense of Dartmouth College before the Supreme Court:
“Sir, you may destroy this little institution, it is weak, it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out! But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land! It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!”
The accounts tell us that at this point Webster lost his composure momentarily – that his “lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears; his voice choked; and he seemed struggling to the utmost, simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling.”
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~govdocs/case/peroration.htm
Whether this actually happened might in our own day be questioned, but for my own part I should expect no more impassioned scene or plea…from one of Dartmouth’s own.
Of Webster we know more, both of greatness and of flaws (and he had both in very large measure) but for sake of time, boredom, and other such things as that, I’ll leave him be.
Moving forward, ever forward the name of Lincoln comes to mind, and with him many another – the likes of Longstreet, Hill, Sam Grant, Uncle Billy Sherman, Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, all of these and more geometrically perfect, aligned as spokes around the hub of a wheel; and at that hub, majestic astride his faithful mount, none other than Robert E. Lee, who saw and faithfully did his duties in two armies over the course of thirty-five years - he who said that duty was "the sublimest word in our language" ... that we can never justly be expected to do more, nor rightly should we expect to do anything less.
There are literary “greats” too, though they are far too many to name, as the list begins with Chaucer, Malory and Shakespeare, and runs all the way thru to our own present. However, if I were to choose but one “great”
modern, it would be Charles Schultz, who gave joy and lessons to the millions of us (myself included) in relating the experiences of several small children, one very small bird, and one of the most talented (and at times tormented) dogs the world has ever seen.
Frost, Nash…okay so that’s three.
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill, Truman, the three Kennedy brothers, Dr. King – all of these and yet more might justly be called “great figures.” (Even that old [expletive deleted] George Patton was great.)
Religion is far too full of “greats” to even begin naming them off. (At one for each of the past …say 2025 years, well, I don’t have enough space on the hard drive for that.)
Long? Well yes, I suppose this is a wee bit long, but in this too there is a lesson: Be careful what you ask for - you just
might get it!
.