I came across a reference in one of the Anne Perry books I'm reading. It was to a poem called Sohrab and Rustum written by Matthew Arnold in 1853. And my mind flew back to English class at Wollongong High School where we dreaded another lesson on the poem we called So Drab and Rusty.
It's a poem of its time when young men were taught that qualities like honour, duty, courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice for Queen and country were valued. It was the time of the Charge of the Light Brigade where hundreds of young cavalrymen charged into the Russian guns knowing they would not survive. Those values are out of fashion now, but they played their part in building the society we enjoy.
I remember hearing family stories of the Great Depression, how there was always a meal in the bush for the swaggie down on his luck. My grandfather, with 8 children to look after, shared his 'piece' at lunchtime with his workmates and collected wild elderberries to make wine to give to those who couldn't afford a drink. Marilyn's grandmother kept a cow so the local kids could get regular milk.
Those values continued for another hundred years, through two world wars, and our teachers were still inculcating them to their students when I was at school. Did they colour my value system? I think they did; and I despair of the modern value system which puts enriching self and immediate family above everyone else, which divides society into 'them' and 'us', and begrudges government assistance to the needy.
Yes, we are certainly living in different times, and I can't believe that they are better ones.
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