To Stand

Wrap Liberty's Flag around me, when I am marked to die in God's cause. It's better to die with honor intact than to suffer any blight of character. Such a martyrdom is equal to a throne in the Kingdom of Heaven. My duty is to stand as a man, in all the classical glory that entails; to labor drenched in sweat and caked in sawdust, to be riding the raging seas, to live under a tower of books, or live in suit, tie, and wing-tipped shoes. Work and family is the sum of a good man's life. This is gallantry. This is the warrior's code.

When at the end of days and the roll of honor is read, who's name will be written there? The Emperor's or the Plowboy's? I would hope that we each can be counted amid the rank of the righteous and the true. We'll be happy, and that in the face of how many trials rolled upon us before. Where will the sneers be of the skeptics in that day?

My duty, whether the end is grave, furnace, hell, heaven, or paradise is clear: to stand as a man. Never to surrender, never to be haughty, never to ride over the poor and meek, but to be the fiercest enemy to tyranny and sin as ever stood upon this earthy rock. That is the chorus I sing, and I will not recompose it. Truth, justice, honor is in the hand of God, may I live up to what he expects. 

Picture courtesey of Wikimedia Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Jacques-Louis_David_-_Oath_of_the_Horatii_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg