Life is a human wilderness
Where duty, right and truth
Are tangled in the morasses
Of folly, doubt and youth.
I know I cannot hope to cleave
A path through brake and swale,
But I a guiding index leave
If I but blaze the trail.
The forest as I struggle through
By compass, sun and stars
I’ll mark so that another, too,
Can travel by my scars.
From woods where labor would get lost
And feet would err or fail
I’ll single pines on ridges crossed
And blaze on them the trail.
O’er range and river toward the West
I’ll keep and pray to learn
Not what is easiest, but best,
And worth a life’s return;
For though I shall not pass again
The way I thus prevail,
It is my task for other men
To blaze the homebound trail.