Let me to-day do something that shall take
A little sadness from the world’s vast store,
And may I be so favored as to make
Of joy’s too scanty sum a little more.
Let me not hurt, by any selfish deed
Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend;
Nor would I pass, unseeing, worthy need,
Or sin by silence when I should defend.
However meager be my worldly wealth
Let me give something that shall aid my kind,
A word of courage, or a thought of health,
Dropped as I pass for troubled hearts to find.
Let me to-night look back across the span
‘Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say–
Because of some good act to beast or man–
“The world is better that I lived to-day.”

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.