The Way

Between the finite and the infinite
The missing link of Love has left a void.
Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join
In one continued chain of endless life.

Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven
Is Love's location.    No dogmatic creed,
No austere faith based on ignoble fear
Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace.
Unless the humblest creatures on the earth
Are bettered by thy loving sympathy
Think not to find a Paradise beyond.

There is no sudden entrance into Heaven.
Slow is the ascent by the path of Love.

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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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

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

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

Love's Way

Love gives us copious potions of delight,
    Of pain and ecstasy, and peace and care;
Love leads us upward, to the mountain height,
    And, like an angel, stands beside us there;
Then thrusts us, demon-like, in some abyss:
    Where, in the darkness of despair, we grope,
Till, suddenly, Love greets us with a kiss
    And guides us back to flowery fields of hope.

Love makes all wisdom seem but poorest folly,
    And yet the simplest mind with Love grows wise,
The gayest heart he teaches melancholy,
    Yet glorifies the erstwhile brooding eyes.
Love lives on change, and yet at change Love mocks,
    For Love's whole life is one great paradox.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My Heaven

Unhoused in deserts of accepted thought,
    And lost in jungles of confusing creeds,
    My soul strayed, homeless, finding its own needs
Unsatisfied with what tradition taught.

The pros and cons, the little ifs and ands,
    The but and maybe, and the this and that,
    On which the churches thicken and grow fat,
I found but structures built on shifting sands.

And all their heavens were strange and far away,
    And all their hells were made of human hate;
    And since for death I did not care to wait,
A heaven I fashioned for myself one day.

Of happy thoughts I built it stone by stone,
    With joy of life I draped each spacious room,
    With love's great light I drove away all gloom,
And in the centre I made God a throne.

And this...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Here And Now

Here, in the heart of the world,
    Here, in the noise and the din,
Here, where our spirits were hurled
    To battle with sorrow and sin,
This is the place and the spot
    For knowledge of infinite things;
This is the kingdom where Thought
    Can conquer the prowess of kings.

Wait for no heavenly life,
    Seek for no temple alone;
Here, in the midst of the strife,
    Know what the sages have known.
See what the Perfect Ones saw -
    God in the depth of each soul,
God as the light and the law,
    God as beginning and goal.

Earth is one chamber of Heaven,
    Death is no grander than birth.
Joy in the life that was given,
    Strive for perfection on earth.
Here, in the turmoil and roar,
    Show what it is to be calm...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox