To-Day

I love this age of energy and force,
    Expectantly I greet each pregnant hour;
Emerging from the all-creative source,
    Supreme with promise, imminent with power.
The strident whistle and the clanging bell,
    The noise of gongs, the rush of motored things
Are but the prophet voices which foretell
    A time when thought may use unfettered wings.

Too long the drudgery of earth has been
    A barrier 'twixt man and his own mind.
Remove the stone, and lo! the Christ within;
    For He is there, and who so seeks shall find.
The Great Inventor is the Modern Priest.
    He paves the pathway to a higher goal.
Once from the grind of endless toil released
    Man will explore the kingdom of his soul.

And all this restless rush, this strain and strife,
    This noise and glare is but the fanfarade
That ushers in the more majestic life
    Where faith shall walk with science, unafraid.
I feel the strong vibrations of the earth,
    I sense the coming of an hour sublime,
And bless the star that watched above my birth
    And let me live in this important time.

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

The Meeting Of The Centuries

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

All That Love Asks

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

Winter Rain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Simple Poetry

As By Fire.

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.

You And To-Day

With every rising of the sun
Think of your life as just begun.

The past has shrived and buried deep
All yesterdays - there let them sleep,

Nor seek to summon back one ghost
Of that innumerable host.

Concern yourself with but to-day;
Woo it and teach it to obey

Your wish and will.    Since time began
To-day has been the friend of man.

But in his blindness and his sorrow
He looks to yesterday and to-morrow.

You and to-day! a soul sublime
And the great pregnant hour of time.

With God between to bind the train,
Go forth, I say - attain - attain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

New Year's Day

When with clanging and with ringing
    Comes the year's initial day,
I can feel the rhythmic swinging
    Of the world upon its way;
And though Right still wears a fetter,
    And though Justice still is blind,
Time's beyond is always better
    Than the paths he leaves behind.

In our eons of existence,
    As we circle through the night,
We annihilate the distance
    'Twixt the darkness and the light.
From beginnings crude and lowly,
    Round and round our souls have trod
Through the circles, winding slowly
    Up to knowledge and to God.

With each century departed
    Some old evil found a tomb,
Some old truth was newly started
    In propitious soil to bloom.
With each epoch some condition
    That has handicapped the...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Hour

This is the world's stupendous hour -
    The supreme moment for the race
To see the emptiness of power,
    The worthlessness of wealth and place,
To see the purpose and the plan
Conceived by God for growing man.

And they who see and comprehend
    That ultimate and lofty aim
Will wait in patience for the end,
    Knowing injustice cannot claim
One lasting victory, or control
Laws that bar progress for the whole.

This is an epoch-making time;
    God thunders through the universe
A message glorious and sublime,
    At once a blessing and a curse.
Blessings for those who seek His light,
Curses for those whose law is might.

Ephemeral as the sunset glow
    Is human grandeur.    Mortal life
Was given that souls might seek an...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Forecast

It may be that I dreamed a dream; it may be that I saw
The forecast of a time to come by some supernal law.

I seemed to dwell in this same world, and in this modern time;
Yet nowhere was there sight or sound of poverty or crime.
All strife had ceased; men were disarmed; and quiet Peace had made
A thousand avenues for toil, in place of War's grim trade.
From east to west, from north to south where highways smooth and broad
Tied State to State, the waste lands bloomed, like garden spots of God.
There were no beggars in the streets; there were no unemployed,
For each man owned his plot of ground, and laboured and enjoyed.
Sweet children grew like garden flowers; all strong and fair to see;
And when I marvelled at the sight, thus spake a Voice to me:
'All Motherhood is now an a...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life

Oh! I feel the growing glory
Of our life upon this sphere,
Of the life that like a river
Runs forever and forever,
From the somewhere to the here,
And still on and onward flowing,
Leads us out to larger knowing,
Through the hidden, to the clear.

And I feel a deep thanksgiving
For the sorrows I have known;
For the worries and the crosses,
And the grieving and the losses,
That along my path were sown.
Now the great eternal meaning
Of each trouble I am gleaning,
And the harvest is my own.

I am opulent with knowledge
Of the Purpose and the Cause.
And I go my way rejoicing,
And in singing seek the voicing
Of love's never-failing laws.
From the now, unto the Yonder,
Full of beauty and of wonder,
Life flows ever without ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Meeting Of The Centuries

A curious vision on mine eyes unfurled
    In the deep night.    I saw, or seemed to see,
    Two Centuries meet, and sit down vis-a-vis
Across the great round table of the world:
One with suggested sorrows in his mien,
    And on his brow the furrowed lines of thought;
    And one whose glad expectant presence brought
A glow and radiance from the realms unseen.

Hand clasped with hand, in silence for a space
    The Centuries sat; the sad old eyes of one
    (As grave paternal eyes regard a son)
Gazing upon that other eager face.
And then a voice, as cadenceless and gray
    As the sea's monody in winter time,
    Mingled with tones melodious, as the chime
Of bird choirs, singing in the dawns of May.

THE OLD CENTURY SPEAKS

By you, Hope s...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox