Who smooth the path of all they meet.
Is this the mark of moral grace?
But niceness, warm and neatly spun,
Can smooth the path where wrongs still run.
To soothe, to spare, to not offend—
May comfort now, but harm in the end.
When feelings rule and thought is slight
We turn away from what is right.
A hive of hearts, attuned to pain,
Demands we bend, again, again.
Yet moral weight is not a mood,
Nor virtue found in platitude.
A treat for tears, a queue ignored,
A compliment too freely poured—
Each gesture smooth, but out of place,
When fairness loses to soft grace.
These acts, though nice, may miss the mark
of progress on the moral arc.
They calm the storm, but in their wake,
Leave deeper wrongs we must unmake.
So let us care, but not be led
By every whim or tear that's shed.
For niceness, when it takes the stage,
Can dim the light of a reasoned age.
