Life’s Answer Poem by Henry Alford

I know not if the dark or bright
Shall be my lot:
If that wherein my hopes delight
Be best or not.

It may be mine to drag for years
Toil's heavy chain:
Or day and night my meat be tears
On bed of pain.

Dear faces may surround my hearth
With smiles and glee:
Or I may dwell alone, and mirth
Be strange to me.

My bark is wafted to the strand
By breath divine:
And on the helm there rests a hand
Other than mine.

One who has known in storms to sail
I have on board:
Above the raving of the gale
I hear my Lord.

He holds me when the billows smite,
I shall not fall:
If sharp, 'tis short; if long, 'tis light;
He tempers all.

Safe to the land--safe to the land,
The end is this:
And then with Him go hand in hand
Far into bliss.