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NOBILITY

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 35, No. 35.

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NOBILITY

By Alice Cary

True worth is in being, not seeming, In doing, each day that goes by, Some little good — not all in dreaming Of great things to do by and by. Whatever men say in their blindness, And spite of the fancies of youth, There's nothing so kingly as kindness, And nothing so royal as truth.
We get back our mete as we measure — We can not do wrong and feel right; Nor can we give pain and feel pleasure, For justice avenges each slight. The air for the wing of the sparrow, The bush for the robin and wren, But always the path that is narrow And straight for the children of men.
'T is not in the pages of story The heart of its ills to beguile, Though he who makes courtships to glory Gives all that he hath for a smile. For when, from her heights, he has won her, Alas, it is only to prove There's nothing so royal as honor, And nothing so loyal as love.
We can not make bargains for blisses, Nor catch them like fishes in nets, And sometimes the thing our life misses Helps more than the things which it gets; For good lieth not in pursuing, Nor gaining of great or of small, But just this — the doing and doing As we would be done by — is all.
— Alice Cary.