The Invisible Helpers

There are, there are
Invisible Great Helpers of the race.
Across unatlased continents of space,
From star to star.
    In answer to some soul's imperious need,
    They speed, they speed.

When the earth-loving young are forced to stand
Upon the border of the Unknown Land,
They come, they come - those angels who have trod
The altitudes of God,
And to the trembling heart
Their strength impart.
    Have you not seen the delicate young maid,
Filled with the joy of life in her fair dawn,
    Look in the face of death, all unafraid,
And smilingly pass on?

This is not human strength; not even faith
    Has such large confidence in such an hour.
    It is a power
Supplied by beings who have conquered death.
    Floating from sphere to sphere
    They hover near
The souls that need the courage they can give.

This is no vision of a dreamer's mind.
Though we are blind
They live, they live,
Filling all space -
Invisible Great Helpers of the race.

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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Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

English

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The Land Between

Between the little Here and larger Yonder,
    There is a realm (or so one day I read)
Where faithful spirits love-enchained may wander,
    Till some remembering soul from earth has fled.
Then, reunited, they go forth afar,
From sphere to sphere, where wondrous angels are.

Not many spirits in that realm are waiting;
    Not many pause upon its shores to rest;
For only love, intense and unabating,
    Can hold them from the longer, higher quest.
And after grief has wept itself to sleep,
Few hearts on earth their vital memories keep.

Should I pass on, across the mystic border,
    Let thy love link me to that pallid land;
I would not seek the heavens of finer order
    Until thy barque had left this coarser strand.
How desolate such journeyings woul...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Wish

Great dignity ever attends great grief,
And silently walks beside it;
And I always know when I see such woe
That Invisible Helpers guide it.
And I know deep sorrow is like a tide,
It cannot ever be flowing;
The high-water mark in the night and the dark -
Then dawn, and the outward going.

But the people who pull at my heart-strings hard
Are the ones whom destiny hurries
Through commonplace ways to the end of their days,
And pesters with paltry worries.
The peddlers who trudge with a budget of wares
To the door that is slammed unkindly;
The vendor who stands with his shop in his hands
Where the hastening hosts pass blindly;

The woman who holds in her poor flat purse
The price of her rent-room only,
While her starved eye feeds on the comfort...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Veils

Veils, everywhere float veils; veils long and black,
Framing white faces, oft-times young and fair,
But, like a rose touched by untimely frost,
Showing the blighting marks of sorrow's track.

Veils, veils, veils everywhere.    They tell the cost
Of man-made war.    They show the awful toll
Paid by the hearts of women for the crimes,
The age-old crimes by selfishness ill-named
'Justice' and 'Honour' and 'The call of Fate' -
High words men use to hide their low estate.
About the joy and beauty of this world
A long black veil is furled.
Even the face of Heaven itself seems lost
Behind a veil.    It takes a fervent soul
In these tense times
To visualise a God so long defamed
By insolent lips, that send out prayers, and prate
Of God's collaboration in dar...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Their Faces

O Beautiful white Angels! who control
The inner workings of each poet soul,
Thou who hast touched my mind with tender graces
Come near to me that I may see thy faces.

Me, didst thou bless before I came to earth;
Me, hast thou kissed, and dowered at my birth,
With such a wealth of sweet imaginings,
That, even in sleep, my dreaming fancy sings.

Sometimes when seeing snow-white clouds at noon,
Or watching silver shadows from the moon,
Within my soul has stirred a joy like fear,
As if some kindred spirit lingered near.

Come closer, Angels! thou whose haloed wings
Do gild for me the meanest ways and things,
With beauty borrowed from the Infinite -
Stand forth, let me behold thee in the light.

O thought supreme!    O death!    O life! unknown...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Intermediary

When from the prison of its body free,
My soul shall soar, before it goes to Thee,
Thou great Creator, give it power to know
The language of all sad, dumb things below.
And let me dwell a season still on earth
Before I rise to some diviner birth:
Invisible to men, yet seen and heard,
And understood by sorrowing beast and bird -
Invisible to men, yet always near,
To whisper counsel in the human ear:
And with a spell to stay the hunter's hand
And stir his heart to know and understand;
To plant within the dull or thoughtless mind
The great religious impulse to be kind.

Before I prune my spirit wings and rise
To seek my loved ones in their paradise,
Yea! even before I hasten on to see
That lost child's face, so like a dream to me,
I would be given ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Most Blest Is He

Most blest is he who in the morning time
Sets forth upon his journey with no staff
Shaped by another for his use.    Who sees
The imminent necessity for toil,
And with each morning wakens to the thought
Of tasks that wait his doing.    Never yet
Has unearned leisure and the gift of gold
Bestowed such benefits upon the young
As need and loneliness; and when life adds
The burden of a duty, difficult,
And hard to carry, then rejoice, O soul!
And know thyself one chosen for high things.
Behind thee walk the Helpers.    Yet lead on!
They only help the lifters, and they give
But unto those who also freely give.
Not till thy will, thy courage, and thy strength
Have done their utmost, and thy love has flowed
In pity and compassion, out to all
(The worthless,...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox