If I could see with a midge’s eye
Or think with a midge’s brain,
I wonder what I’d say of the world
With all its joy and pain.
Would my seven brief hours of mortal life
Seem as long as seventy years,
As I danced in the flickering sunshine
Amid my tiny peers?
Should I feel the slightest hope or care
For the midges yet to be;
Or think I died before my time
If I died at half-past three,
Instead of living till set of sun
On the breath of the summer wind;
Or dream that the world was made for me
And all my little kind?
Perhaps if I did I’d know as much
Of Nature’s mighty plan,
And what it meant for good or ill,
As that larger midge, a man!
Anonymous.