It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his pack But no one can rate a burden's weight Until it has been on his back - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

But to every mind there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth,
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

laugh and the world laughs with you. weep and weep alone

I would kneel by the bank, in the grasses dank,
And drink you, drink you, drink you. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from “If,” Picked Poems. (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1912)