Noon has broken into the middle sky, and Morning is gone.
II
NOON
The noon is short; the sun never loiters on the meridian, nor does the shadow on the old dial by the garden stay long at XII. The present, like the noon, is only a point, and a point so fine that it is not measurable by the grossness of action. Thought alone is delicate enough to tell the breadth of the present.
The past belongs to God; the present only is ours. And, short as it is, there is more in it, and of it, than we can well manage. That man who can grapple it, and measure it, and fill it with his purpose, is doing a man’s work; none can do more; but there are thousands who do less.
Short as it is, the present is great and strong—as much stronger than the past as fire than ashes, or as death than the grave. The noon sun will quicken vegetable life that in the morning was dead. It is hot and scorching; I feel it now upon my head; but it does not scorch and heat like the bewildering present. There are no oak leaves to interrupt the rays of the burning now. Its shadows do not fall east or west—like the noon, the shade it makes falls straight from sky to earth—straight from heaven to hell!
Memory presides over the past; Action presides over the present. The first lives in a rich temple hung with glorious trophies and lined with tombs; the other has no shrine but Duty, and it walks the earth like a spirit.
—I called my dog to me, and we shared together the meal that I had brought away at sunrise from the mansion under the elms; and now Carlo is gnawing at the bone that I have thrown to him, and I stroll dreamily in the quiet noon atmosphere upon that grassy knoll under the oaks.