Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life Is a Privilege

Life is a privilege. Its youthful days
Shine with the radiance of continuous Mays.
To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire, 
To feed with dreams the heart’s perpetual fire, 
To thrill with virtuous passions, and to glow
With great ambitions – in one hour to know
The depths and heights of feeling – God! in truth, 
How beautiful, how beautiful is youth! 

Life is a privilege. Like some rare rose
The mysteries of the human mind unclose.
What marvels lie in the earth, and air, and sea! 
What stores of knowledge wait our opening key! 
What sunny roads of happiness lead out
Beyond the realms of indolence and doubt! 
And what large pleasures smile upon and bless
The busy avenues of usefulness! 

Life is a privilege. Thought the noontide fades
And shadows fall along the winding glades, 
Though joy-blooms wither in the autumn air, 
Yet the sweet scent of sympathy is there.
Pale sorrow leads us closer to our kind, 
And in the serious hours of life we find
Depths in the souls of men which lend new worth
And majesty to this brief span of earth.

Life is a privilege. If some sad fate
Sends us alone to seek the exit gate, 
If men forsake us and as shadows fall, 
Still does the supreme privilege of all
Come in that reaching upward of the soul
To find the welcoming Presence at the goal, 
And in the Knowledge that our feet have trod
Paths that led from, and must wind back, to God.