September 6
Poetry & Kindness 30.0
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Every Friday, I share a poem. Friday is also the day I post a prompt of something you can do to make the world a kinder place. I call this the Kind is Kool challenge.
I offer both the poem and the kindness challenge without any obligation, so “Comments” are turned off every Friday. Enjoy.
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We Are Not Always Glad When We Smile
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.
James Whitcomb Riley
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Kind is Kool Challenge
Week 30 Challenge – Donate something…blood, time, gently used items.
