However mean your life is, meet it and live it;

Do not shun¹ it and call it hard names.

It is not so bad as you are.

It looks poorest when you are richest.

The fault-finder will find faults in paradise.

Love your life, poor as it is.

You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode²;

The snow melts before its door as early in the spring.

I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly³ there,

And have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most in dependent lives of any.

May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgivings⁴.

Most think that they are above being supported by the town;

but it often happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means,

which should be more disreputable.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herblike sage⁵.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.

Turn the old, return to them.

Things do not change; we change.

Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,

That stirred our hearts in youth,

The impulses to wordless prayer,

The dreams of love and truth;

The longing⁶ after something’s lost,

The spirit’s yearning⁷ cry,

The striving after better hopes

These things can never die.

The timid hand stretched forth⁸ to aid

A brother in his need,

A kindly⁹ word in grief’s dark hour

That proves a friend indeed ;

The plea for mercy softly breathed,

When justice threatens nigh,

The sorrow of a contrite¹⁰ heart

These things shall never die.

Let nothing pass for every hand

Must find some work to do ;

Lose not a chance to waken love

Be firm,and just ,and true;

So shall a light that cannot fade

Beam on thee from on high.

And angel voices say to thee

These things shall never die.