Our poets have given us some wonderfully vivid pictures of the fearless. Perhaps the greatest in all literature is Shelley's _Prometheus_. It is worth reading a score of times in order that its spirit of fearlessness might be absorbed. Joaquin Miller's _Columbus_, which I have already quoted, gives a marvelously vivid picture of the great admiral when even hope had gone from his own heart, when he could not pierce by faith the darkness of his own soul.
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights!
Yet though it was all darkness _to_ his own soul, and _in_ his own soul, he kept on. His orders were "Sail on!" And his courage and bravery brought him to the light of the new world.
Browning in his _Prospice_ opens with the bold and daring interrogative: "Fear death?" and, after showing what there is to fear, exclaims as in an ecstasy of fearlessness:
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore And bade me creep past. No! let me fare like my peers, the heroes of old. In a minute pay, glad, life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold.
I want to radiate the active consciousness even when I am storm-tossed, beaten down by fierce winds, compelled to stay my journey by the sand-laden, hot sirocco of the desert, dashed upon the cruel rocks by tempestuous waves, frozen by the blizzards of the North, that I have nothing to fear, that nothing can harm me save myself, that God is over all and in all. As David called upon mountains, and all hills, fire, and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, to praise Him, fulfilling His word, so would I call. And in calling I would rest and be at peace.
And I want to radiate to others my fearlessness for them. They need not fear though the heavens fall. Many a man fails in the fierce conflict raging in his own soul because he has been taught to fear the fierce judgment of an angry God. I want with all the vehemence of my nature to radiate a spirit that will kill and bury forever such fear in human souls. Let no one daunt you by such teaching. Under all circumstances, brother, keep your face up!
If, in the conflict, you lose heart, do not let your face down so as to be covered by the mud into which you are sinking. Battle on, though you are finally swallowed up--or fear you will be. Go down face up, and let the last thing your expiring gaze rests upon, be the stars above. Though the mud and mire cover your mouth so that you cannot cry out,