Experience

Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967) This morning I looked at the map of the day And said to myself, “This is the way! This is the way I will go; Thus shall I range on the roads of achievement, The way is so clear—it shall all be a joy on the lines marked out.” And then as I went came a place that was strange,— ’Twas a place not down on the map! And I stumbled and fell and lay in the weeds, And looked on the day with rue. I am learning a little—never to be sure— To be positive only with what is past, And to peer sometimes at the things to come As a wanderer treading the night When the mazy stars neither point nor beckon, And of all the roads, no road is sure. I see those men with maps and talk Who tell how to go and where and why; I hear with my ears the words of their mouths, As they finger with ease the marks on the maps; And only as one looks robust, lonely, and querulous, As if he had gone to a country far And made for himself a map, Do I cry to him, “I would see your map! I would heed that map you have!”

A Confession to a Friend in Trouble

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less Here, far away, than when I tarried near; I even smile old smiles—with listlessness— Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere. A thought too strange to house within my brain Haunting its outer precincts I discern: —That I will not show zeal again to learn Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain. . . . It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer That shapes its lawless figure on the main, And each new impulse tends to make outflee The unseemingly instinct that had lodgment here; Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me! More Poems @copyright 2025 InterPure