#MIDDLEBURY
Experience
Carl Sandburg
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!”
About this poem
“Experience” was published in “In Reckless Ecstasy” (Asgard Press, 1904).
About Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Ill., on Jan. 6, 1878. His collections of poetry include “Chicago Poems” (Henry Holt and Company, 1916) and “Cornhuskers” (Henry Holt and Company, 1918), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. He died in 1967.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
This poem is in the public domain. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
