Optimism

When mankind explores and expands into the universe, there should be a great deal of optimism so let's find a few expressions of that in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.

En route to Saturn:

"'Here we are, safe and comfortable till we reach Saturn. After that we should never lack for excitement, or for material to work with on the way home.'
"'True.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 1-73 AT pp. 29-30.

On the Grand Survey:

"After three years we were weary and had suffered losses. Oh, the wonder wasn't gone. How could it ever go - from world after world after world?...
"It was still a heart-speeding thing to find another sentient race, actually more than to find another planet colonizable by man."
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 79-102 AT p. 79.

Exploring Gray/Avalon:

"'...[the Ythrians] have scientific curiosity and, yes, in them perhaps even more than in the humans who went along, a spirit of adventure. Oh, it was a wonderful thing to be young in that band!'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 103-134 AT p. 115.

For a student in San Francisco Integrate:

"'A certain Master Merchant I know will soon be in the market for another apprentice and accepts what I have to told him about you. Are you interested?'
"I collapsed into Betty's arms. She says she'll find a way to follow me."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 175-197 AT p. 197.

When journeyman David Falkayn has averted a war and explained that mercantilism is nobler than knighthood which depends on slavery or serfdom and killing:

"He murmured, as best he could in Latin, 'Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea...'"
-Poul Anderson, "A Sun Invisible" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 263-315 AT p. 314.

When Nicholas van Rijn recruits Emil Dalmady as an entrepreneur:

"'Afterward you go get rich, if you survive, and have a big ball of fun even if you don't. Hokay?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Esau" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 517-553 AT pp. 552-553.

When the Polesotechnic League has begun:

"'The world's great age begins anew....'
"As it has before, and will again...
"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way." - Le Matelot.
-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 555-609 AT 555-556.

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
"Fraught with a later prize;
"Another Orpheus sings again,
"And loves, and weeps, and dies.
"A new Ulysses leaves once more
"Calypso for his native shore." -Shelley.
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 273.

To Be Young

See Waking And Waiting and The High Sierra.

These two posts quote William Wordsworth writing something similar to a remark that Poul Anderson's Peter Berg makes in "The Problem of Pain":

"'Oh, it was a wonderful thing to be young in that band!'
"He had not yet reached thirty, but somehow his cry was not funny." (p. 33)

Berg refers to a time when he shared the Ythrians' sense of adventure (see also here) while exploring a planet with them. He aged suddenly as a result of that experience.

When I was at University in the 1970s, a student addressing a meeting while enthusing about the then Portuguese Revolution said that he knew how Wordsworth felt but kept misquoting him, ending with:

"It was bliss to be alive in that very dawn!"

A better read student kept wincing and covering his face. I remember the incident with amusement.

"To be young" is a major literary theme. See here.

Those Were The Days

"The Problem of Pain."

On his first job after graduating from the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas, Peter Berg explored the future Avalon with Ythrians who had not only scientific curiosity but also a sense of adventure. We have quoted his enthusiastic description twice before:

"'Oh, it was a wonderful thing to be young in that band!'"

-see here.

 

Berg is not yet thirty but it is possible to feel nostalgia for very recent times. In fact, I think that nostalgia is too precious a commodity to waste on the past. We can realize that we are now in times for which we will be nostalgic when they are gone. I managed to spin out my time in University and also to return to Higher Education twice later. Thus, while a student, I could remember being a student. In Dublin, someone said that he would read Ulysses in thirty years time when he was feeling nostalgic about Dublin. That was fifty years ago. Alice In Wonderland ends with Alice's older sister looking into the future to Alice looking back:

"...the dream of Wonderland of long ago..."