Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

The lines frame courage as a necessary “price” for inner peace: without the willingness to face risk and uncertainty, a person remains trapped by “little things” and the isolating paralysis of fear. The poem contrasts the cramped world of timidity with the expansive, austere rewards of bravery—“mountain heights” and a “bitter joy” that comes from confronting danger and limitation directly. The final image, “the sound of wings,” evokes flight as a metaphor for liberation and transcendence, suggesting that only through courageous action can one access the fullest range of human experience, including its hard-won exhilarations.