If You Can Keep It by Eric Metaxas

Author:Eric Metaxas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-25T15:42:21+00:00

Let’s go back to Longfellow’s poem. I remember that as I read through its magnificent lines, its peculiar magic worked on me. For the first time in my life I found myself seriously thinking about the dangers faced and being moved emotionally by the great sacrifices of those in the revolutionary era. I was disturbed to think that this had never been brought home to me before. And I realized that by the time I was a student at Yale, the heroic and patriotic were actively ridiculed. The idea of loving one’s country was thought hopelessly backward and even offensive.

But as I read the Longfellow poem now, as an adult, I saw that we had done something deeply regrettable. The feelings I felt reading it were the same feelings millions of parents and teachers and schoolchildren had felt over many generations, but very few in my generation or the generations that followed had experienced that. The idea of loving one’s country had been forgotten, and very few people any longer knew these stories or had the joy of knowing the poem’s great lines.

But before I say more about Longfellow’s great poem specifically, let’s refresh our memories about what led to the events it describes.

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