One ship drives east and another drives west,
With the self-same winds that blow,
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
That tell them way to go.
 
Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate,
As we journey along through life,
‘Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author and poet.
“The Winds of Fate” (1913), Poems of Optimism (1915)
    (Source)

Sometimes called "'Tis the Set of the Sail."

There is a longer variant of the poem, sometimes called "One Ship Sails East," that includes two stanzas in front, and has slightly different words in the analogous stanzas. I have not found a primary source for this version:

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.


 
Added on 12-Nov-14 | Last updated 12-Jun-24
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