Just To Be Good

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Just to be good--
  This is enough--enough!
  O we who find sin's billows wild and rough,
  Do we not feel how more than any gold
  Would be the blameless life we led of old
  While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss?
  Ah! though we miss
  All else but this,
  To be good is enough!

  It is enough--
  Enough--just to be good!
  To lift our hearts where they are understood;
  To let the thirst for worldly power and place
  Go unappeased; to smile back in God's face
  With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.
  Ah! though we miss
  All else but this,
  To be good is enough!

© James Whitcomb Riley