Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Do noble things, not dream them, all day long, So making life, death, and that vast for ever, One grand, sweet song.”
- Source
- Two Years Ago
- Date
- 1857
Meaning of “Do noble things, not dream them, all day…”
Kingsley contrasts indefinitely imagining admirable deeds with actually doing good, presenting moral action as what gives coherence to an entire life.
Where does it come from?
Two Years Ago, Project Gutenberg #10995. Major Campbell recites lines he says he once wrote in an album; the wording also circulated as Kingsley’s poem “A Farewell.” The record keeps the novel’s fictional-speaker setting rather than presenting the lines as detached productivity advice.