Completion

When I shall meet God's generous dispensers
    Of all the riches in the heavenly store,
Those lesser gods, who act as Recompensers
    For loneliness and loss upon this shore,
Methinks abashed, and somewhat hesitating,
    My soul its wish and longing will declare.
Lest they reply:    'Here are no bounties waiting:
    We gave on earth, your portion and your share.'

Then shall I answer:    'Yea, I do remember
    The many blessings to my life allowed;
My June was always longer than December,
    My sun was always stronger than my cloud,
My joy was ever deeper than my sorrow,
    My gain was ever greater than my loss,
My yesterday seemed less than my to-morrow,
    The crown looked always larger than the cross.

'I have known love, in all its radiant splendour,
    It shone upon my pathway to the end.
I trod no road that did not bloom with tender
    And fragrant blossoms, planted by some friend.
And those material things we call successes,
    In modest measure, crowned my earthly lot.
Yet was there one sweet happiness that blesses
    The life of woman, which to me came not.

'I knew the hope of motherhood; a season
    I felt a fluttering heart beat 'neath my own;
A little cry - then silence.    For that reason
    I dare, to you, my only wish make known.
The babe who grew to angelhood in heaven,
    I never watched unfold from child to man.
And so I ask, that unto me be given
    That motherhood, which was God's primal plan.

'All womankind He meant to share its glories;
    He meant us all to nurse our babes to rest.
To croon them songs, to tell them sleepy stories,
    Else why the wonder of a woman's breast?
He must provide for all earth's cheated mothers
    In His vast heavens of shining sphere on sphere,
And with my son, there must be many others -
    My spirit children who will claim me here.

'Fair creatures by my loving thoughts created -
    Too finely fashioned for a mortal birth -
Between the borders of two worlds they waited
    Until they saw my spirit leave the earth.
In God's great nursery they must be waiting
    To welcome me with many an infant wile.
Now let me go and satisfy this longing
    To mother children for a little while.'

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

Love's Mirage

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

You Never Can Tell

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

Life And I.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

After The Engagement

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Spinster

I

Here are the orchard trees all large with fruit;
And yonder fields are golden with young grain.
In little journeys, branchward from the nest,
A mother bird, with sweet insistent cries,
Urges her young to use their untried wings.
A purring Tabby, stretched upon the sward,
Shuts and expands her velvet paws in joy,
While sturdy kittens nuzzle at her breast.

O mighty Maker of the Universe,
Am I not part and parcel of Thy World,
And one with Nature?    Wherefore, then, in me
Must this great reproductive impulse lie
Hidden, ashamed, unnourished, and denied,
Until it starves to slow and tortuous death?
I knew the hope of spring-time; like the tree
Now ripe with fruit, I budded, and then bloomed;
We laughed together through the young May morns;

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Silent Tragedy

The deepest tragedies of life are not
Put into books, or acted on the stage.
Nay, they are lived in silence, by tense hearts
In homes, among dull unperceiving kin,
And thoughtless friends, who make a whip of words
Wherewith to lash these hearts, and call it wit.

There is a tragedy lived everywhere
In Christian lands, by an increasing horde
Of women martyrs to our social laws.
Women whose hearts cry out for motherhood;
Women whose bosoms ache for little heads;
Women God meant for mothers, but whose lives
Have been restrained, restricted, and denied
Their natural channels, till at last they stand
Unmated and alone, by that sad sea
Whose slow receding tide returns no more.
Men meet great sorrows; but no man can grasp
The depth, and height, of such a gr...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Lord, Speak Again

When God had formed the Universe, He thought
Of all the marvels therein to be wrought
And to His aid then Motherhood was brought.

'My lesser self, the feminine of Me,
She will go forth throughout all time,' quoth He,
'And make My world what I would have it be.

'For I am weary, having laboured so,
And for a cycle of repose would go
Into that silence which but God may know.

'Therefore I leave the rounding of My plan
To Motherhood; and that which I began
Let woman finish in perfecting man.

'She is the soil:    the human Mother Earth:
She is the sun, that calls the seed to earth.
She is the gardener, who knows its worth.

'From Me, all seed, of any kind must spring.
Divine the growth such seed and soil will bring.
For all is Me, a...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Realisation

Hers was a lonely, shadowed lot;
Or so the unperceiving thought,
Who looked no deeper than her face,
Devoid of chiselled lines of grace -
No farther than her humble grate,
And wondered how she bore her fate.

Yet she was neither lone nor sad;
So much of love her spirit had,
She found an ever-flowing spring
Of happiness in everything.

So near to her was Nature's heart
It seemed a very living part
Of her own self; and bud and blade,
And heat and cold, and sun and shade,
And dawn and sunset, Spring and Fall,
Held raptures for her, one and all.

The year's four changing seasons brought
To her own door what thousands sought
In wandering ways and did not find -
Diversion and content of mind.

She loved the tasks that filled e...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

When Baby Souls Sail Out

When from our mortal vision
    Grown men and women go
To sail strange fields Elysian
    And know what spirits know,
I think of them as tourists,
    In some sun-gilded clime,
'Mong happy sights and dear delights
    We all shall find, in time.

But when a child goes yonder
    And leaves its mother here,
Its little feet must wander,
    It seems to me, in fear.
What paths of Eden beauty,
    What scenes of peace and rest,
Can bring content to one who went
    Forth from a mother's breast?

In palace gardens, lonely,
    A little child will roam
And weep for pleasures only
    Found in its humble home.
It is not won by splendour,
    Nor bought by costly toys;
To hide from harm on mother's arm
    Makes all its sum...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Divorced

Thinking of one thing all day long, at night
I fall asleep, brain weary and heart sore;
But only for a little while.    At three,
Sometimes at two o'clock, I wake and lie,
Staring out into darkness; while my thoughts
Begin the weary treadmill-toil again,
From that white marriage morning of our youth
Down to this dreadful hour.

    I see your face
Lit with the lovelight of the honeymoon;
I hear your voice, that lingered on my name
As if it loved each letter; and I feel
The clinging of your arms about my form,
Your kisses on my cheek - and long to break
The anguish of such memories with tears,
But cannot weep; the fountain has run dry.

We were so young, so happy, and so full
Of keen sweet joy of life.    I had no wish
Outside your pleasure;...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox