Poems (Angier)/Which is Best?

by Annie Lanman Angier

For works with similar titles, see Which is Best?.

WHICH IS BEST?

In sadness to sigh for the pleasures of youth?
Or, with souls wiser grown, taking counsel of Truth,
While pluming our wings for a flight from our cage,
To joyfully sing of the pleasures of age.

O! not till the day's long toil is done,
And the gathering shades of night steal on;
Do the stars look down, through yon azure vault flying,
Bright, passionless, calm, like the eyes of the dying.

From a fevered dream as the weary one wakes,
When health the strong fetters of suffering breaks;
To the chastened soul, seems a new power given,
Rightly to weigh the worlds, earth and heaven.

We say—'tis well to launch a bark,
That shall plough the wide sea, cold and dark;
And breast the current of wind and wave,
Though its doom may be an ocean grave:

But is it not better to furl the sail
Of a ship that has weathered many a gale;
And calmly sit with the Port in view
And praise the Pilot who steered us through?

When our cup of joy to the brim is filled,
And the mentor voice within is stilled;
E'en then, the heart sighs for the rest that remains,
For those pleasures which ne'er are embittered by pains.

Who questions—which best is—the conflict's strife,
The hoarse cry half-muttered of "Life for life;"
Or the rest that follows the battle's roar,
And the song of peace, on either shore?

Then what though life seem but a bright starry gleam,
A sweet cup just tasted, a battle, a dream;
A sail on an ocean to harbor unknown?
Faith smiling points upward, and Hope beckons "On!"