a prescription for life (The Winds of Fate)
My father graduated from the USNA in 1940. On this occasion, my fathers uncle, as a practicing physician, saw fit to write a "prescription for life" for my father. A prescription which presumably would never require a refill (personally, I don't believe it ever did).
A fitting choice of poetry was the prescription. One with a naval theme for a newly minted naval officer. While my fathers uncle ascribed the poem to a poet by the name of "anonymous", the internet told me that in fact my great uncle was wrong. And the words were not exactly correct either if one believes the attribution cited below. However, neither of these things changes the fact that this was a beautiful gift to bestow on someone setting out in life for a great adventure. Thanks to my great uncle for the thought behind this!
It is amazing how close my fathers uncle was to the right words (absolutely no loss of meaning). Here are the correct words and attribution.
The Winds of Fate
One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails,
And Not the gales,
That tell us the way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As we voyage along through life,
'Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
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Imagine how long it would take Dr. Heimark to find the actual poem from which he wrote the Rx considering no such thing as computers (as we know them today) and Internet search at the time. I wonder what source he used? Did he have the actual poem in front of him and changed some of the wording to fit the occasion? We will never know!
I suspicion he transcribed from memory. I say so because the meaning didn't change in my mind :-)