Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/36

Our feet on the torrent's brink.
Our eyes on the cloud afar,
We fear the things we think,
Instead of the things that are.

Like a tide our work should rise-
Each later wave the best;
To-day is a king in disguise,^[1]
To-day is the special test.

Like a sawyer's work is life:
The present makes the flaw.
And the only field for strife
Is the inch before the saw.

1. "The days are ever divine. . . . . They come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing; and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away."—Emerson.