When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?

The line is a rhetorical question urging that gratitude should not fade once danger has passed. It rebukes the common human and political tendency to forget benefactors, allies, or sacrifices after a crisis ends—especially after wars, emergencies, or moments of national peril. Framed as a moral challenge, it implies that true gratitude is proven not in the heat of necessity (when thanks may be self-interested) but in the calmer aftermath, when remembrance and recompense require deliberate choice. In a statesman’s mouth, it can also function as a call for public recognition—honors, support, or policy—toward those who helped secure safety.