The Higher One Strives To Go
What is this idea of excellence
Where “Good enough” just can’t stay?
What is it in man that makes us plan
To strive deeper inside each day?
What secret whisper abides within
Drawing us to mountain peaks
Transcending possibilities
And incomprehensible human strength?
What the early Greeks once called arate’
A yearning deep within;
The spirit of us all to heed the call
To rise above nimbus winds.
And tornadoes turning, always yearning
For something uplifting ahead;
Misfortune, defeat is the fate one meets
Or unfathomable greatness instead.
For doctors, dancers, farmers,
Masons and carpenters, too,
Teachers of subjects from highways to heaven
Do the best that they can do.
As philosophers, statesmen, presidents
And sportsmen of all kinds,
Artists, musicians and astronauts
Sail through space and time.
And what makes soldiers lay down their souls
That others might live instead;
To take the fall and give their all
Last measure of life they led?
Does anyone know how avatars grow
Or gold is purged from stone?
Excellence, I hear, is never so clear
As the higher one strives
to go.
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