A Reflection on Alice Cary’s Poem, “Nobility”

For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There’s nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

Reflection by Marcus Goodyear

In her poem “Nobility” (full text below), Alice Cary lists kindness as the first among virtues—before truth, honor, love, courage, or honesty. You might be surprised to learn she published this in 1850 in pre-civil war Cincinnati, Ohio. You might also be surprised to learn that Cincinnati was one of the largest cities in the United States at the time and an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Beecher Stowe lived there and published Uncle Tom’s Cabin just two years later.

Even during Cary’s era of stark contrasts and national violence, she argued that nobility starts with kindness. For all our desires to do great things, to see great change, and to right great wrongs, it is ordinary actions that define us. Small kindnesses toward others. Neighbors being kind to neighbors. In the fourth stanza, Cary paraphrases Jesus from the sermon on the mount. The doing is all, she says, “and doing as we would be done by.”

Shortly after the American Civil War, Alice Cary and her sister Phoebe were active in the women’s suffrage movement alongside Susan B. Anthony. Phoebe actually helped edit The Revolution for Anthony, and Alice seems to have been closely connected to the effort as well. The U.S. was struggling through Reconstruction. Women were still unable to vote. In another poem, “To Solitude,” Cary laments that she is “Weary of the dimly dying hopes that never quite all die.”

The nobility of kindness is only one step on the way to peace and equality, but kindness matters. Whatever our political passions, may we never rush to truth and courage in a way that sets aside kindness.

True worth is in being, not seeming, —
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good—not in the dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There’s nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

We get back our mete as we measure—
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.

‘Tis not in the pages of story
The heart of its ills to beguile,
Though he who makes courtship to glory
Gives all that he hath for her smile.
For when from her heights he has won her,
Alas! it is only to prove
That nothing’s so sacred as honor,
And nothing so loyal as love!

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.

Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world, early and late.
No jot of our courage abating
Our part is to work and to wait
And slight is the sting of his trouble
Whose winnings are less than his worth.
For he who is honest is noble
Whatever his fortunes or birth.