I think it was in my school reader in Melbourne, in the early 1960s, that I first read this verse, which has stayed with me ever since: These legendary lines are from the longer poem “The Call,” by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt, written during the Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763 as a call to seize the day, to live life to the fullest; that it was also a call to arms hadn’t then occurred to me. During my childhood, my nose was invariably in a library book and The Famous Five, and Cherry Ames nurse mysteries overlapped with biographies of composers and artists whose difficult lives fascinated me. They achieved virtual immortality through their music and paintings, despite the years of being blighted by miserable poverty, depleting illness, and daunting family tragedy.
Many did not live to reach age 40, among them Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Chopin. My youthful imagination dwelt on the place of suffering in human existence, romanticizing it as a trigger to achievement in the face of challenge and hardship, viewing it as an essential rite to activate and nurture the insight, sensitivity, and passion necessary to shape special effort and ability into superior accomplishment. One valued classmate and a cherished teacher at my all-girls Melbourne high school later provided the impetus for more intellectually and emotionally mature reading as I eagerly tackled Andre Gide, Anatole France, Albert Camus, and other French authors in their mother tongue.
While I wholly embraced the .
