Satiety

To yearn for what we have not had, to sit
    With hungry eyes glued on the Future's gate,
Why, that is heaven compared to having it
    With all the power gone to appreciate.

Better to wait and yearn, and still to wait,
    And die at last with unappeased desire,
Than live to be the jest of such a fate,
    For that is my conception of hell-fire.

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

Earnestness.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

A Wish

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

The Radiant Christ

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

Begin The Day

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 Voluptuary.

Oh, I am sick of love reciprocated,
    Of hopes fulfilled, ambitions gratified.
Life holds no thing to be anticipated,
    And I am sad from being satisfied.

The eager joy felt climbing up the mountain
    Has left me now the highest point is gained.
The crystal spray that fell from Fame's fair fountain
    Was sweeter than the waters were when drained.

The gilded apple which the world calls pleasure,
    And which I purchased with my youth and strength,
Pleased me a moment. But the empty treasure
    Lost all its lustre, and grew dim at length.

And love, all glowing with a golden glory,
    Delighted me a season with its tale.
It pleased the longest, but at last the story
    So oft repeated, to my heart grew stale.

I lived for self, ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Desolation.

        I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain
    Of love unrequited, or cold death's woe,
    Is sweet compared to that hour when we know
        That some grand passion is on the wane;

        When we see that the glory and glow and grace
    Which lent a splendor to night and day
    Are surely fading, and showing the gray
        And dull groundwork of the commonplace;

        When fond expressions on dull ears fall,
    When the hands clasp calmly without one thrill,
    When we cannot muster by force of will
        The old emotions that came at call;

        When the dream has vanished we fain would keep,
    When the heart, like a watch, runs out of gear,
    And all the savor goes out of the year,
        Oh, then is the time - if we ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Heaven And Hell

While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face,
    Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the hand
    And taught my doubting heart to understand
That which has puzzled all the human race.
Full many a sage has questioned where in space
    Those counter worlds were? where the mystic strand
    That separates them?    I have found each land,
And Hell is vast, and Heaven a narrow space.

In the small compass of thy clasping arms,
    In reach and sight of thy dear lips and eyes,
    There, there for me the joy of Heaven lies.
Outside, lo! chaos, terrors' wild alarms,
And all the desolation fierce and fell
Of void and aching nothingness, makes Hell.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Karma

I

We cannot choose our sorrows.    One there was
Who, reverent of soul, and strong with trust,
Cried, 'God, though Thou shouldst bow me to the dust,
Yet will I praise thy everlasting laws.
Beggared, my faith would never halt or pause,
But sing Thy glory, feasting on a crust.
Only one boon, one precious boon I must
Demand of Thee, O opulent great Cause.
Let Love stay with me, constant to the end,
Though fame pass by and poverty pursue.'
With freighted hold her life ship onward sailed;
The world gave wealth, and pleasure, and a friend,
Unmarred by envy, and whose heart was true.
But ere the sun reached midday, Love had failed.

II

Then from the depths, in bitterness she cried,
'Hell is on earth, and heaven is but a dream;
And human lif...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life

On a bleak, bald hill with a dull world under,
    The dreary world of the Commonplace,
I have stood when the whole world seemed a blunder
    Of dotard Time, in an aimless race.
With worry about me and want before me -
    Yet deep in my soul was a rapture spring
That made me cry to the grey sky o'er me:
    'Oh, I know this life is a goodly thing!'

I have given sweet years to a thankless duty
    While cold and starving, though clothed and fed,
For a young heart's hunger for joy and beauty
    Is harder to bear than the need of bread.
I have watched the wane of a sodden season,
    Which let hope wither, and made care thrive,
And through it all, without earthly reason,
    I have thrilled with the glory of being alive.

And now I stand by the grea...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Grief.

There is a hungry longing in the soul,
    A craving sense of emptiness and pain,
She may not satisfy nor yet control,
    For all the teeming world looks void and vain.
No compensation in eternal spheres,
She knows the loneliness of all her years.


There is no comfort looking forth nor back,
    The present gives the lie to all her past.
Will cruel time restore what she doth lack?
    Why was no shadow of this doom forecast?
Ah! she hath played with many a keen-edged thing;
Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting.


In the unnatural glory of the hour,
    Exalted over time, and death, and fate,
No earthly task appears beyond her power,
    No possible endurance seemeth great.
She knows her misery and her majesty,
And recks not...

Emma Lazarus