This morning I looked at the map of the dayAnd 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 comeAs a wanderer treading the nightWhen the mazy stars neither point nor beckon,And of all the roads, no road is sure.I see those men with maps and talkWho 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 farAnd made for himself a map,Do I cry to him, “I would see your map!I would heed that map you have!”