A Prayer

Master of sweet and loving lore,
    Give us the open mind
To know religion means no more,
    No less, than being kind.

Give us the comprehensive sight
    That sees another's need;
And let our aim to set things right
    Prove God inspired our creed.

Give us the soul to know our kin
    That dwell in flock and herd,
The voice to fight man's shameful sin
    Against the beast and bird.

Give us a heart with love so fraught
    For all created things,
That even our unspoken thought
    Bears healing on its wings.

Give us religion that will cope
    With life's colossal woes,
And turn a radiant face of hope
    On troops of pigmy foes.

Give us the mastery of our fate
    In thoughts so warm and white,
They stamp upon the brows of hate
    Love's glorious seal of light.

Give us the strong, courageous faith
    That makes of pain a friend,
And calls the secret word of death
    'Beginning,' and not 'end.'

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet, born on November 5, 1850, and died on October 30, 1919. She was known for her works expressing optimistic views and moral lessons. Her most famous book was 'Poems of Passion'. Her poem 'Solitude' contains the famous lines, 'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone'. Over her career, Wilcox became popularly known as a 'people's poet'.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

No Song

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

English

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Prayer

Lord, let us pray.

Give us the open mind, O God,
    The mind that dares believe
In paths of thought as yet untrod;
    The mind that can conceive
Large visions of a wider way
Than circumscribes our world to-day.

May tolerance temper our own faith,
    However great our zeal;
When others speak of life and death,
    Let us not plunge a steel
Into the heart of one who talks
In terms we deem unorthodox.

Help us to send our thoughts through space,
    Where worlds in trillions roll,
Each fashioned for its time and place,
    Each portion of the whole;
Till our weak minds may feel a sense
Of Thy Supreme Omnipotence.

Let us not shame Thee with a creed
    That builds a costly church,
But blinds us to a brother's need...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My Faith

My faith is rooted in no written creed;
And there are those who call me heretic;
Yet year on year, though I be well or sick
Or opulent, or in the slough of need,
If, light of foot, fair Life trips by me pleasuring,
Or, by the rule of pain, old Time stands measuring
The dull, drab moments - still ascends my cry:
'God reigns on high!
He doeth all things well!'

Not much I prize, or one, or any brand
Of theologic lore; nor think too well
Of generally accepted heaven and hell.
But faith and knowledge build at Love's command
A beauteous heaven; a heaven of thought all clarified
Of hate and fear and doubt; a heaven of rarefied
And perfect trust; and from the heaven I cry:
'God reigns on high!
Whatever is, is best.'

My faith refuses to accept the...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Arrow And Bow

It is easy to stand in the pulpit, or in the closet to kneel,
    And say:    'God do this; God do that! -
Make the world better; relieve the sorrows of man; for the sake of
Thy Son,
Oh, forgive all sin!'    Then, having planned out God's work, to feel
    Our duty is done.
It is easy to be religious this way -
Easy to pray.

It is harder to stand on the highway, or walk in the crowded mart;
    And say:    'I am He.    I am He.
'Mine the world-burden; mine the sorrows of men; mine the Christ-work
'To forgive my brother's sin,' and then to live the Christ-part and never to shirk.
    It is hard for you and me
To be religious this way,
Day after day.

But God is no longer in heaven; we drove Him out with our prayers,
Drove Him out with our sermons and...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Prayer

I do not undertake to say
    That literal answers come from Heaven,
But I know this - that when I pray
    A comfort, a support is given
That helps me rise o'er earthly things
As larks soar up on airy wings.

In vain the wise philosopher
    Points out to me my fabric's flaws,
In vain the scientists aver
    That "all things are controlled by laws."
My life has taught me day by day
That it availeth much to pray.

I do not stop to reason out
    The why and how.    I do not care,
Since I know this, that when I doubt,
    Life seems a blackness of despair,
The world a tomb; and when I trust,
Sweet blossoms spring up in the dust.

Since I know in the darkest hour,
    If I lift up my soul in prayer,
Some sympathetic, loving Pow...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Paean Of Peace

With ever some wrong to be righting,
    With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
    Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions
    His torchlight has fearlessly cast,
He shows us tribes warring in legions,
    In jungles of ages long passed.

Religion, forgetting her station,
    Forgetting her birthright from God,
Set nation to warring with nation
    And scattered dissension abroad.
Dear creeds have made men kill each other,
    Fair faith has bred hate and despair,
And brother has battled with brother
    Because of a difference in prayer.

But earth has grown wiser and kinder,
    For man is evolving a soul:
From wars of an age that was blinder,
    We rise to a peace-gird...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Creed To Be

Our thoughts are molding unmade spheres,
    And, like a blessing or a curse,
They thunder down the formless years,
    And ring throughout the universe.

We build our futures, by the shape
    Of our desires, and not by acts.
There is no pathway of escape;
    No priest-made creeds can alter facts.

Salvation is not begged or bought;
    Too long this selfish hope sufficed;
Too long man reeked with lawless thought,
    And leaned upon a tortured Christ.

Like shriveled leaves, these worn out creeds
    Are dropping from Religion's tree;
The world begins to know its needs,
    And souls are crying to be free.

Free from the load of fear and grief,
    Man fashioned in an ignorant age;
Free from the ache of unbelief
    He fle...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox