Explore "Worth While" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is easy enough to be pleasant / When life flows by like a song, / But the man worth while is the one who will smile / When everything goes dead wrong. / For the test of the heart is trouble, / And it always comes with the years, / And the smile that is worth the praises of earth / Is the smile that shines through tears.
It is easy enough to be prudent / When nothing tempts you to stray, / When without or within no voice of sin / Is luring your soul away; / But it's only a negative virtue / Until it is tried by fire, / And the life that is worth the honour on earth / Is the one that resists desire.
By the cynic, the sad, the fallen, / Who had no strength for the strife, / The world's highway is cumbered to-day- / They make up the sum of life; / But the virtue that conquers passion, / And the sorrow that hides in a smile- / It is these that are worth the homage on earth, / For we find them but once in a while.