Home
Fictions/Novels
Short Stories
Poems
Essays
Plays
Nonfictions
 
Authors
All Titles
 






In Association with Amazon.com

Home > Authors Index > Browse all available works of Edmund Vance Cooke > Text of What Are You Doing?

A poem by Edmund Vance Cooke

What Are You Doing?

________________________________________________
Title:     What Are You Doing?
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke [More Titles by Cooke]

Do you lazily nurse your knee and muse?
Do you contemplate your conquering thews
With a critical satisfaction?
But yesterday's laurels are dry and dead
And to-morrow's triumph is still ahead;
To-day is the day for action.

Yesterday's sun: is it shining still?
To-morrow's dawn: will its coming fill
To-day, if to-day's light fail us?
Not so. The past is forever past;
To-day's is the hand which holds us fast,
And to-morrow may never hail us.

The present and only the present endures,
So it's hey for to-day! for to-day is yours
For the goal you are still pursuing.
What you have done is a little amount;
What you will do is of lesser account,
But the test is, what are you doing?


[The end]
Edmund Vance Cooke's poem: What Are You Doing?

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN