The joy of life is living it, or so it seems to me; <br />In finding shackles on your wrists, then struggling till you're free; <br />In seeing wrongs and righting them, in dreaming splendid dreams, <br />Then toiling till the vision is as real as moving streams. <br />The happiest mortal on the earth is he who ends his day <br />By leaving better than he found to bloom along the way. <br />Were all things perfect here there would be naught for man to do; <br />If what is old were good enough we'd never need the new. <br />The only happy time of rest is that which follows strife <br />And sees some contribution made unto the joy of life. <br />And he who has oppression felt and conquered it is he <br />Who really knows the happiness and peace of being free. <br />The miseries of earth are here and with them all must cope. <br />Who seeks for joy, through hedges thick of care and pain must grope. <br />Through disappointment man must go to value pleasure's thrill; <br />To really know the joy of health a man must first be ill. <br />The wrongs are here for man to right, and happiness is had <br />By striving to supplant with good the evil and the bad. <br />The joy of life is living it and doing things of worth, <br />In making bright and fruitful all the barren spots of earth. <br />In facing odds and mastering them and rising from defeat, <br />And making true what once was false, and what was bitter, sweet. <br />For only he knows perfect joy whose little bit of soil <br />Is richer ground than what it was when he began to toil.<br /><br />Edgar Albert Guest<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/improvement-4/
