Something Left Undone
However zealously people work, something remains unfinished, and yesterday’s cares add weight to each new day. The accumulating burden seems beyond their strength, like the sky borne on the shoulders of dwarfs in Northern legends.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Reflective Poetry · 178 words
First lines
Labor with what zeal we will, / Something still remains undone, / Something uncompleted still / Waits the rising of the sun.
By the bedside, on the stair, / At the threshold, near the gates, / With its menace or its prayer, / Like a mendicant it waits;
Waits, and will not go away; / Waits, and will not be gainsaid; / By the cares of yesterday / Each to-day is heavier made;
Till at length the burden seems / Greater than our strength can bear, / Heavy as the weight of dreams, / Pressing on us everywhere.
Genres
- Reflective Poetry — Five rhymed quatrains consider how unfinished labor and accumulated cares weigh on people from day to day.
Tags
unfinished work · labor · daily cares · burdens
What this Textopian page supports
Something Left Undone is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Reflective Poetry
- Length: 178 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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