Songs, Legends, and Ballads/To-Day

by John Boyle O'Reilly

TO-DAY.

ONLY from day to day
The life of a wise man runs;
What matter if seasons far away
Have gloom or have double suns?

To climb the unreal path,
We stray from the roadway here;
We swim the rivers of wrath,
And tunnel the hills of fear.

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.