One By One

Little by little and one by one,
    Out of the ether, were worlds created;
Star and planet and sea and sun,
    All in the nebulous Nothing waited
Till the Nameless One Who has many a name
Called them to being and forth they came.

All things mighty and all things small,
    Stone and flower and sentient being,
Each is an answer to that one call,
    A part of Himself that His will is freeing -
Freeing to go on the long, long way
That winds back home at the end of the day.

Little by little does mortal man
    Build his castles for joy and glory,
And one by one time shatters each plan
    And lowers his palaces, story by story-
Story by story, till earth is just
A row of graves in the lowly dust.

One by one, whatever was called,
    Must be called back to the primal Centre.
Let no soul tremble or be appalled,
    For the heart of the Maker is where we enter -
Is where we enter to gain new force
Before we are sent on another course.

And one by one, as He calls us back,
    We shall find the souls that we loved with passion,
In the great way-stations along the track,
    And clasp them again in the old, sweet fashion -
In the old, sweet fashion when earth we trod -
And journey along with them up to God.

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

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English

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Existence

You are here, and you are wanted,
    Though a waif upon life's stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
    With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing
Called your spirit into being -
Gave you strength for any fate.
Since your life by Him was needed,
All your ways by Him are heeded -
    You can trust and you can wait.

You can wait to know the meaning
    Of the troubles sent your soul;
Of the chasms intervening
    'Twixt your purpose and your goal;
Of the sorrows and the trials,
Of the silence and denials,
    Ofttimes answering to your pleas;
Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,
And of pain's too generous measure -
    You can wait the WHY of these.

Forth from planet unto planet,
    You have go...

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

The Worker And The Work

In what I do I note the marring flaw,
The imperfections of the work I see;
Nor am I one who rather DO than BE,
Since its reversal is Creation's law.

Nay, since there lies a better and a worse,
A lesser and a larger, in men's view,
I would be better than the thing I do,
As God is greater than His universe.

He shaped Himself before He shaped one world:
A million eons, toiling day and night,
He built Himself to majesty and might,
Before the planets into space were hurled.

And when Creation's early work was done,
What crude beginnings out of chaos came -
A formless nebula, a wavering flame,
An errant comet, a voracious sun.

And, still unable to perfect His plan,
What awful creatures at His touch found birth -
Those protoplasmic mo...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Law

The sun may be clouded, yet ever the sun
Will sweep on its course till the cycle is run.
And when into chaos the systems are hurled,
Again shall the Builder reshape a new world.

Your path may be clouded, uncertain your goal;
Move on, for the orbit is fixed for your soul.
And though it may lead into darkness of night,
The torch of the Builder shall give it new light.

You were, and you will be:    know this while you are.
Your spirit has travelled both long and afar.
It came from the Source, to the Source it returns;
The spark that was lighted, eternally burns.

It slept in the jewel, it leaped in the wave,
It roamed in the forest, it rose in the grave,
It took on strange garbs for long aeons of years,
And now in the soul of yourself it appears.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Suicide

Vast was the wealth I carried in life's pack -
    Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time
    And Fate, those robbers fit for any crime,
Stole all, and left me but the empty sack.
Before me lay a long and lonely track
    Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb;
    Behind me lay in shadows the sublime
Lost lands of Love's delight.    Alack!    Alack!

Unwearied, and with springing steps elate,
    I had conveyed my wealth along the road.
    The empty sack proved now a heavier load:
I was borne down beneath its worthless weight.
I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate.
    There was no answer.    Stung by sorrow's goad
    I forced my way into that grim abode,
And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate.

Unknown ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Three Souls

Three Souls there were that reached the Heavenly Gate,
And gained permission of the Guard to wait.
Barred from the bliss of Paradise by sin,
They did not ask or hope to enter in.
'We loved one woman (thus their story ran);
We lost her, for she chose another man.
So great our love, it brought us to this door;
We only ask to see her face once more.
Then will we go to realms where we belong,
And pay our penalty for doing wrong.'

'And wert thou friends on earth?'    (The Guard spake thus.)
'Nay, we were foes; but Death made friends of us.
The dominating thought within each Soul
Brought us together, comrades, to this goal,
To see her face, and in its radiance bask
For one great moment - that is all we ask.
And, having seen her, we must journey back
The p...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox