Courage and Strength

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

 

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

 

If we are marked to die, we are enow

 

He which hath no stomach to this fight,

 

O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts.

 

The game’s afoot:

 

Now all the youth of England are on fire,

 

When we have matched our rackets to these balls,

 

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

 

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

 

No coward soul is mine,

 

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge Driven by invisible blows, The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

 

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, ’Tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.

 

No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

 

Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

 

Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred.

 

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismay’d?

 

My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.

 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

This feat of Tell, the archer, will be told While yonder mountains stand upon their base. By heaven! The apple’s cleft right through the core.

 

The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.

 

Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn’t roar?

 

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he

One of the phrases that kept running through their conversation was “pushing the outside of the envelope.” The “envelope” was a flight-test term referring to the limits of a particular aircraft’s performance, how tight a turn it could make at such-and-such a speed, and so on. “Pushing the outside,” probing the outer limits, of the envelope seemed to be the great challenge and satisfaction of flight test.