Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight

by Marianne Moore — a poem card from Justes Mots

Marianne Moore's poem celebrates steady, laborious progress over magical shortcuts, using an elephant as a symbol of durable endurance. The work argues that substance emerges from persistent effort rather than aesthetic charm. Ideal for celebrating achievement, perseverance, and practical success in any endeavor.

With an elephant to ride upon—“with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,”
she shall outdistance calamity anywhere she goes.
Speed is not in her mind inseparable from carpets. Locomotion arose
in the shape of an elephant, she clambered up and chose
to travel laboriously. So far as magic carpets are concerned, she knows
that although the semblance of speed may attach to scarecrows
of æsthetic procedure, the substance of it is embodied in such of those
tough-grained animals as have outstripped man’s whim to suppose…

Themes: birthday · wedding · anniversary · graduation