The Arrow and the Song
We can calculate with fair accuracy the number of miles an automobile will go in an hour. We can gauge pretty closely the amount of merchandise a given sum of money will buy. But a good deed or a kind impulse is not measurable. Their influence works in devious ways and lives on when perhaps we can see them no more.
I shout an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.