Read "High Noon" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Time's finger on the dial of my life / Points to high noon! and yet the half-spent day / Leaves less than half remaining, for the dark, / Bleak shadows of the grave engulf the end.
To those who burn the candle to the stick, / The sputtering socket yields but little light. / Long life is sadder than an early death. / We cannot count on raveled threads of age / Whereof to weave a fabric. We must use / The warp and woof the ready present yields / And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink / How brief the past, the future still more brief, / Calls on to action, action! Not for me / Is time for retrospection or for dreams, / Not time for self-laudation or remorse.