C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Julie Mathilde Lippmann (1864–1952)

“What is life but what a man is thinking of all day?”
—EMERSON.

IF life were only what a man

Thinks daily of,—his little care,

His petty ill, his trivial plan;

His sordid scheme to hoard and spare;

His meagre ministry, his all

Unequal strength to breast the stream;

His large regret—repentance small;

His poor unrealizèd dream,—

’Twere scarcely worth a passing nod:

Meet it should end where it began.

But ’tis not so. Life is what God

Is daily thinking of for man.