Dr. S. B. Dunn gives some good advice in this bit of verse:
The heart too often hath quailed with dread,
And quite its courage lost,
By casting its glance too far ahead
For the bridge that never was crossed.
The toughest fight, the bitterest dregs,
The stormiest sea that tossed,
Was the passage-at-arms--no, the passage-at-legs,
Of the bridge that never was crossed.
A wind that withers wherever it goes,
And biting as winter frost;
Is the icy blast that constantly blows
From the bridge that never was crossed.
What folly for mortals to travel that way,
As many have found to their cost--
To tempt the terrors by night or by day
Of the bridge that never was crossed.
The adage is old and worn a bit,
But worthy of being embossed--
Never cross a bridge till you come to it--
The bridge that must be crossed.
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* * * * *
Nobody is made so uncomfortable by borrowing trouble as the
borrower himself, altho, of course, everybody in the region
is disturbed and vexed by the habit. There is an ancient
Welsh legend which has always seemed to us a case in point.
“There were two kings formerly in Britain,” the legend says,
“named Nynniaw and Peibiaw. As these two ranged the fields one
starlit night, ‘See,’ said Nynniaw (who at this point seems
something of a poet), ‘what a beautiful and extensive field I
possess.’ ‘Where is it?’ said Peibiaw. ‘The whole firmament,’
said Nynniaw, ‘far as vision can extend.’ ‘And dost thou see,’
said Peibiaw, ‘what countless herds and flocks of cattle and
sheep I have depasturing thy field?’ ‘Where are they?’ said
Nynniaw. ‘Why, the whole host of stars which thou seest,’ said
Peibiaw, ‘and each of golden effulgence, with the moon for their
shepherdess to superintend their wanderings.’ ‘They shall not
graze in my pasture,’ said Nynniaw (who now appears to have been
fitly named). ‘They shall,’ said Peibiaw. ‘They shall not,’
said one. ‘They shall,’ said the other, repeatedly, bandying
contradiction, until at last it arose to wild contention
between them, and from contention it came to furious war, until
armies and subjects of both were nearly annihilated in the
desolation.”--_Harper’s Bazar._
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