Tendersweet

If you use a little loving and you use a bit of song

You will find the old world's never going to go so very wrong;

If you use a little sweetness and a little tenderness,

If you spread a little kindness on the other man's distress,

If you sometimes stoop to help to lift the other fellow's load,

If you do a little dance-step as you go along the road,

You will find that all of these things you have taken time to do

In some happy form or other will come laughing back to you.

That's a pretty good religion; that's the kind the Master tried;

He just chose a way of loving and of sweetness; and He died

Hanging on the rough spikes piercing through His tender hands

            and feet;

Yet, through all that He had suffered, still His smile was

            tendersweet;

And the way His hurt feet walked in is an open road for you,

And no spikes await you in it; every tender deed you do

For the fellows all about you in the way you go along

Will come back to you in loving, and in laughing and in song.

Poems for Declamation Table of Content