Destiny
By Edgar Guest
Who knows what lies behind us all
that we who live today
might train a rose along a wall
or watch our children play?
We cannot mark each deed or thought
in some long-vanished year
by which the present earth was wrought
for us to labor here.
But all we find along our way
to times by-gone we owe;
the world is as it is today
because men made it so.
And since today must be the sum
of all that was before,
our lives may hold what is to come
when we shall be no more.
Blindly perforce the road we tread
and cope with good and ill
that one a thousand years ahead
his little place may fill.
So strangely is God’s purpose planned
that none of us can see
into the great uncharted land
which men call DESTINY.
No we are here, and know not why;
the end, no man can say.
The answer to our lives may lie
long centuries away.
From his book, Collected Verse of Edgar A Guest
© 1934 by The Reilly & Lee Company
Although I won’t promise this old world will stand “long centuries” more, there’s still a valuable sentiment in these lines.
Staircase image by jplenio — Pixabay
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