Living

Just to Be Good

by James Whitcomb Riley 1849–1916

From Green Fields and Running Brooks (1893)

Living

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!

MLA

Riley, James Whitcomb. “Just to Be Good.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/riley/60/.

Chicago

Riley, James Whitcomb. “Just to Be Good.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/riley/60/.

Read this poem with the Codex →

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