Bonds Are the Flight to Safety, True?

i'm interested in adding bonds to balance out my stock exposure. But if rates rise, which seems likely, bond prices will fall. If rates stay low, what's the point? Wouldn't i essentially just be as well off keeping that money in cash? Even when rates rose from the fifties to the eighties, what was the worst nominal return for bonds in a single year for the ten year? And there's still negative four % in a bad year. That's the thing, eventually, you want bond yeals to rise, because that means youregoingto be earning higher again.