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'.

November 5, 1850

October 30, 1919

English

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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A Good Sport

I was a little lad, and the older boys called to me from the pier:
They called to me:    'Be a sport:    be a sport!    Leap in and swim!'
I leaped in and swam, though I had never been taught a stroke.
Then I was made a hero, and they all shouted:
    'Well done!    Well done,
Brave boy, you are a sport, a good sport!'
And I was very glad.

But now I wish I had learned to swim the right way,
    Or had never learned at all.
Now I regret that day,
    For it led to my fall.

I was a youth, and I heard the older men talking of the road to wealth;
They talked of bulls and bears, of buying on margins,
And they said, 'Be a sport, my boy, plunge in and win or lose it all!
It is the only way to fortune.'
So I plunged in and won; and the older men patted me on th...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Holiday

The Wife

The house is like a garden,
    The children are the flowers,
The gardener should come methinks
    And walk among his bowers,
Oh! lock the door on worry
    And shut your cares away,
Not time of year, but love and cheer,
    Will make a holiday.

The Husband

Impossible!    You women do not know
The toil it takes to make a business grow.
I cannot join you until very late,
So hurry home, nor let the dinner wait.

The Wife

The feast will be like Hamlet
    Without a Hamlet part:
The home is but a house, dear,
    Till you supply the heart.
The Xmas gift I long for
    You need not toil to buy;
Oh! give me back one thing I lack -
    The love-light in your eye.

The Husband
<...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Holiday

Berlin, Germany, gave the school children a half holiday to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania.

War declares a holiday;
Little children, run and play.
Ring-a-rosy round the earth
With the garland of your mirth.

Shrill a song brim full of glee
Of a great ship sunk at sea.
Tell with pleasure and with pride
How a hundred children died.

Sing of orphan babes, whose cries
Beat against unanswering skies;
Let a mother's mad despair
Lend staccato to your air.

Sing of babes who drowned alone;
Sing of headstones, marked 'Unknown';
Sing of homes made desolate
Where the stricken mourners wait.

Sing of battered corpses tossed
By the heedless waves, and lost.
Run, sweet children, sing and play;
War declares a holiday.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Leaf

Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve,
    That you were married, or soon to be.
I have not thought of you, I believe,
    Since last we parted.    Let me see:
Five long Summers have passed since then -
    Each has been pleasant in its own way -
And you are but one of a dozen men
    Who have played the suitor a Summer day.

But, nevertheless, when I heard your name,
    Coupled with some one's, not my own,
There burned in my bosom a sudden flame,
    That carried me back to the day that is flown.
I was sitting again by the laughing brook,
    With you at my feet, and the sky above,
And my heart was fluttering under your look -
    The unmistakable look of Love.

Again your breath, like a South wind, fanned
    My cheek, where the blushes came ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Leaf.

Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve,
    That you were married, or soon to be.
I have not thought of you, I believe,
    Since last we parted. Let me see:
Five long Summers have passed since then -
    Each has been pleasant in its own way -
And you are but one of a dozen men
    Who have played the suitor a Summer day.

But, nevertheless, when I heard your name,
    Coupled with some one's, not my own,
There burned in my bosom a sudden flame,
    That carried me back to the day that is flown.
I was sitting again by the laughing brook,
    With you at my feet, and the sky above,
And my heart was fluttering under your look -
    The unmistakable look of Love.

Again your breath, like a South wind, fanned
    My cheek, where the blushes came and...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Little Song

Oh, a great world, a fair world, a true world I find it;
A sun that never forgets to rise,
On the darkest night, a star in the skies,
And a God of love behind it.

Oh, a good life, a sweet life, a large life I take it,
Is what He offers to you, and me;
A chance to do, and a chance to be,
Whatever we chose to make it.

Oh, a far way, a high way, a sure way He leads us;
And if the journey at times seems long,
We must trudge ahead, with a trustful song,
And know at the end He needs us.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Maiden To Her Mirror

He said he loved me! Then he called my hair
    Silk threads wherewith sly Cupid strings his bow,
    My cheek a rose leaf fallen on new snow;
And swore my round, full throat would bring despair
To Venus or to Psyche.

    Time and care
    Will fade these locks; the merry god, I trow,
    Uses no grizzled cords upon his bow.
How will it be when I, no longer fair,
    Plead for his kiss with cheeks whence long ago
The early snowflakes melted quite away,
The rose leaf died -and in whose sallow clay
    Lie the deep sunken tracks of life's gaunt crow?

When this full throat shall wattle fold on fold,
    Like some ripe peach left drying on a wall,
    Or like a spent accordion, when all
Its music has exhaled -will love grow cold?

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Man's Good-Bye

Do you think, dear, as you say
Such a light good-bye to-day,
That this parting time may be
Mayhaps less to you, than me?

What a wonder of surprise
Looks out from your sunny eyes.
'Just a nice acquaintance.'    So
We have called it, dear, I know.

Now you end it with a word,
While my inmost soul is stirred.
No -you cannot understand.
But, dear, as I touch your hand,

Listening to your light good-bye,
All a man's roused passions cry
Like a tiger, stirred, at bay.
Oh! you draw your hand away.

'I've no right to speak so?'    Pray
Was it your right day by day
By your sweet coquettish arts
To invade my heart of hearts?

It is death to let you go.
You will hate me, dear, I know;
But I swear, ere you go h...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Man's Ideal

A lovely little keeper of the home,
Absorbed in menu books, yet erudite
When I need counsel; quick at repartee
And slow to anger.    Modest as a flower,
Yet scintillant and radiant as a star.
Unmercenary in her mould of mind,
While opulent and dainty in her tastes.
A nature generous and free, albeit
The incarnation of economy.
She must be chaste as proud Diana was,
Yet warm as Venus.    To all others cold
As some white glacier glittering in the sun;
To me as ardent as the sensuous rose
That yields its sweetness to the burrowing bee
All ignorant of evil in the world,
And innocent as any cloistered nun,
Yet wise as Phryne in the arts of love
When I come thirsting to her nectared lips.
Good as the best, and tempting as the worst,
A saint, a siren, ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Man's Last Love

Like the tenth wave, that offers to the shore
Accumulated opulence and force,
So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore,
    Carry increasing passion down the course
Of time to proffer thee.
        Oh! not the faint
    First ripple of the sea should be its pride,
But the great climax of its unrestraint,
    Which culminates in one commanding tide.

The lesser billows of each crude emotion
    Break on life's strand, recede, and then unite
With love's large sea; and to some late devotion
    Unrecognised, they bring their lost delight.
So all the vanished fancies of my past
Live yet in this one passion, grand and vast.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Man's Repentance

(Intended for recitation at club dinners.)


To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
    Under the gaslight I saw a face -
A woman's face! and I swear to heaven
    It looked like the ghastly ghost of - Grace!

And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried,
    And loved her a season as we men do.
And then - but pshaw! why, of course, she is married,
    Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two.

She was perfectly calm on the day we parted;
    She spared me a scene, to my great surprise.
"She wasn't the kind to be broken-hearted,"
    I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes.

I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance,
    To make good my promise there and then.
But the world would have called it a mesalliance!
    I d...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Man's Reverie

How cold the old porch seems.    A dreary chill
    Creeps upward from the river at twilight,
    And yet, I like to linger here at night,
And dream the summer tarries with us still.

The summer and the summer guests, or guest.
    (Men rarely dream in plurals.)    Over there
    Beyond the pillars, stands the rustic chair,
As bare and empty as a robin's nest.

No pretty head reclines its golden bands
    Against the back.    No playful winds disclose
    Distracting glimpses of embroidered hose:
No palm leaf waves in dainty, dangerous hands.

How cold it is!    That star up yonder gleams
    A white ice sickle from the heavenly eaves.
    That bleak wind from the river sighs and grieves,
Perchance o'er some poor fellow's broken dreams.

Co...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A March Snow.

Let the old snow be covered with the new:
    The trampled snow, so soiled, and stained, and sodden.
Let it be hidden wholly from our view
    By pure white flakes, all trackless and untrodden.
When Winter dies, low at the sweet Spring's feet,
Let him be mantled in a clean, white sheet.

Let the old life be covered by the new:
    The old past life so full of sad mistakes,
Let it be wholly hidden from the view
    By deeds as white and silent as snow-flakes.
Ere this earth life melts in the eternal Spring
Let the white mantle of repentance, fling
Soft drapery about it, fold on fold,
Even as the new snow covers up the old.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Marine Etching

A yacht from its harbour ropes pulled free,
And leaped like a steed o'er the race-track blue,
Then up behind her the dust of the sea,
A gray fog, drifted, and hid her from view.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Marine Etching

A yacht from its harbor ropes pulled free,
    And leaped like a steed o'er the race track blue,
Then up behind her, the dust of the sea,
    A gray fog drifted, and hid her from view.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Married Coquette

Sit still, I say, and dispense with heroics!
    I hurt your wrists?    Well, you have hurt me.
It is time you found out that all men are not stoics,
    Nor toys to be used as your mood may be.
I will not let go of your hands, nor leave you
    Until I have spoken.    No man, you say,
Dared ever so treat you before?    I believe you,
    For you have dealt only with boys till to-day.

You women lay stress on your fine perception,
    Your intuitions are prated about;
You claim an occult sort of conception
    Of matters which men must reason out.
So then, of course, when you ask me kindly
    "To call again soon," you read my heart.
I cannot believe you were acting blindly;
    You saw my passion for you from the start.

You are one of...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Meeting.

        Quite carelessly I turned the newsy sheet;
    A song I sang, full many a year ago,
        Smiled up at me, as in a busy street
    One meets an old-time friend he used to know.

        So full it was, that simple little song,
    Of all the hope, the transport, and the truth,
        Which to the impetuous morn of life belong,
    That once again I seemed to grasp my youth.

        So full it was of that sweet, fancied pain
    We woo and cherish ere we meet with woe,
        I felt as one who hears a plaintive strain
    His mother sang him in the long ago.

        Up from the grave the years that lay between
    That song's birthday and my stern present came
        Like phantom forms and swept across the scene,
    Bearing their broke...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Minor Chord

I heard a strain of music in the street -
    A wandering waif of sound.    And then straightway
    A nameless desolation filled the day.
The great green earth that had been fair and sweet,
Seemed but a tomb; the life I thought replete
    With joy, grew lonely for a vanished May.
    Forgotten sorrows resurrected lay
Like bleaching skeletons about my feet.

Above me stretched the silent, suffering sky,
    Dumb with vast anguish for departed suns
    That brutal Time to nothingness has hurled.
The daylight was as sad as smiles that lie
    Upon the wistful, unkissed mouths of nuns,
    And I stood prisoned in an awful world.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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