The Struggle

Life is a struggle for peace,

A longing for rest,

A hope for the battles to cease,

A dream for the best;

And he is not living who stays

Contented with things,

Unconcerned with the work of the days

And all that it brings.

He is dead who sees nothing to change,

No wrong to make right;

Who travels no new way or strange

In search of the light;

Who never sets out for a goal

That he sees from afar

But contents his indifferent soul

With things as they are.

Life isn’t rest—it is toil;

It is building a dream;

It is tilling a parcel of soil

Or bridging a stream;

It’s pursuing the light of a star

That but dimly we see,

And in wresting from things as they are The joy that should be.