The Traveller

Reply to Rudyard Kipling's "He travels the fastest who travels alone."

Who travels alone with his eyes on the heights,
Though he laughs in the day time oft weeps in the nights;

For courage goes down at the set of the sun,
When the toil of the journey is all borne by one.

He speeds but to grief though full gaily he ride
Who travels alone without love at his side.

Who travels alone without lover or friend
But hurries from nothing, to naught at the end.

Though great be his winnings and high be his goal,
He is bankrupt in wisdom and beggared in soul.

Life's one gift of value to him is denied
Who travels alone without love at his side.

It is easy enough in this world to make haste
If one live for that purpose - but think of the waste;

For life is a poem to leisurely read,
And the joy of the journey lies not in its speed.

Oh! vain his achievement and petty his pride
Who travels alone without love at his side.

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'.

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English

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The Winners

What the moral? Who rides may read.
When the night is thick and the tracks are blind
A friend at a pinch is a friend, indeed,
But a fool to wait for the laggard behind.
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

White hands cling to the tightened rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel,
Tenderest voices cry "Turn again!"
Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel,
High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

One may fall but he falls by himself,
Falls by himself with himself to blame.
One may attain and to him is pelf,
Loot of the city in Gold or Fame.
Plunder of earth shall be all his own
Who travels the fastest and travels alone.

Wherefore the more ye be hel...

Rudyard

The Traveled Man

Sometimes I wish the railroads all were torn out,
    The ships all sunk among the coral strands.
I am so very weary, yea so worn out,
    With tales of those who visit foreign lands.

When asked to dine, to meet these traveled people,
    My soup seems brewed from cemetery bones.
The fish grows cold on some cathedral steeple,
    I miss two courses while I stare at thrones.

I'm forced to leave my salad quite untasted,
    Some musty, moldy temple to explore.
The ices, fruit and coffee all are wasted
    While into realms of ancient art I soar.

I'd rather take my chance of life and reason,
    If in a den of roaring lions hurled
Than for a single year, ay, for one season,
    To dwell with folks who'd traveled round the world.

So patroni...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life

Life, like a romping schoolboy, full of glee,
Doth bear us on his shoulder for a time.
There is no path too steep for him to climb.
With strong, lithe limbs, as agile and as free,
As some young roe, he speeds by vale and sea,
    By flowery mead, by mountain peak sublime,
    And all the world seems motion set to rhyme,
Till, tired out, he cries, "Now carry me!"
    In vain we murmur; "Come," Life says, "Fair play!"
And seizes on us.    God! he goads us so!
    He does not let us sit down all the day.
At each new step we feel the burden grow,
Till our bent backs seem breaking as we go,
    Watching for Death to meet us on the way.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life.

Life, like a romping schoolboy, full of glee,
    Doth bear us on his shoulders for a time.
    There is no path too steep for him to climb,
With strong, lithe limbs, as agile and as free,
As some young roe, he speeds by vale and sea,
    By flowery mead, by mountain peak sublime,
    And all the world seems motion set to rhyme,
Till, tired out, he cries, "Now carry me!"
    In vain we murmur, "Come," Life says, "fair play!"
And seizes on us. God! he goads us so!
    He does not let us sit down all the day.
At each new step we feel the burden grow,
Till our bent backs seem breaking as we go,
    Watching for Death to meet us on the way.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Travels By The Fireside

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
    And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
    Points to the misty main,

It drives me in upon myself
    And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
    And still more pleasant dreams,

I read whatever bards have sung
    Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
    Come thronging back to me.

In fancy I can hear again
    The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
    The sea at Elsinore.

I see the convent's gleaming wall
    Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
    And castles by the Rhine.

I journey on by park and spire,
    Beneath centennial trees,
Throug...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Retrospection

I look down the lengthening distance
    Far back to youth's valley of hope.
How strange seemed the ways of existence,
    How infinite life and its scope!

What dreams, what ambitions came thronging
    To people a world of my own!
How the heart in my bosom was longing,
    For pleasures and places unknown.

But the hill-tops of pleasure and beauty
    Were covered with mist at the dawn;
And only the rugged road Duty
    Shone clear, as my feet wandered on.

I loved not the path and its leading,
    I hated the rocks and the dust;
But a Voice from the Silence was pleading,
    It spoke but one syllable - "Trust."

I saw, as the morning grew older,
    The fair flowered hills of delight;
And the feet of my comrades grew bolder,

Ella Wheeler Wilcox