Explore "We are not Always Glad when we Smile" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We are not always glad when we smile: / Though we wear a fair face and are gay, / And the world we deceive / May not ever believe / We could laugh in a happier way. -- / Yet, down in the deeps of the soul, / Ofttimes, with our faces aglow, / There's an ache and a moan / That we know of alone, / And as only the hopeless may know.
We are not always glad when we smile, -- / For the heart, in a tempest of pain, / May live in the guise / Of a smile in the eyes / As a rainbow may live in the rain; / And the stormiest night of our woe / May hang out a radiant star / Whose light in the sky / Of despair is a lie / As black as the thunder-clouds are.
We are not always glad when we smile! -- / But the conscience is quick to record, / All the sorrow and sin / We are hiding within / Is plain in the sight of the Lord: / And ever, O ever, till pride / And evasion shall cease to defile / The sacred recess / Of the soul, we confess / We are not always glad when we smile.