Here's To The Glory Of Life Poem by Alec de Candole

Here's to the glory of life, to the good and the ill that we know
To the loves and the passions of men as they move and they live,
To the hope of the future that beams, and the splendour of past long ago.
All the chance and the change that the sweet-bitter seasons may give!

When I stand on the height of the hills in dominion, surveying the land,
Where the ridges are silent, regarding the rivers below,
Then the course of their current I trace with my eye from the peak where I stand,
Turning now to the towns in the plain, with their clamour of woe;

Even thus when I gaze with my soul for an hour on the surge and the stream
Of mankind, with its infinite ripple and chequer of change,
With its love and its hatred, its longing and laughter, its shade and its gleam.
Commingled of mirth and of care, and so heavenly strange.

With the pain that makes sweeter the pleasure, more happy so desperately snatched
From the sorrow that threatens the future, the ray the more rare.
The more glowing, so caught through the cloudrift, the pang of distress that is matched
By the gladness enhanced, and the friendship the foe makes more fair.

Then with wilder thanksgiving I praise the wise Maker of all, and adore
The Ordainer of sun and of shadow, the Giver of breath,
Life's fashioner, mingling the hope and the terror, behind and before,
Multitudinous laughter of life, and high promise of death,