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 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.    Though 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 soul 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 as the 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 lead from and must lead back to God.