The Summer Girl
She's the jauntiest of creatures, she's the daintiest of misses,
With her pretty patent leathers or her alligator ties,
With her eyes inviting glances and her lips inviting kisses,
As she wanders by the ocean or strolls under country skies.
She's a captivating dresser, and her parasols are stunning,
Her fads will-take your breath away, her hats are dreams of style;
She is not so very bookish, but with repartee and punning
She can set the savants laughing and make even dudelets smile.
She has no attacks of talent, she is not a stage-struck maiden;
She is wholly free from hobbies, and she dreams of no 'career;'
She is mostly gay and happy, never sad or care-beladen,
Though she sometimes sighs a little if a gentleman is near.
She's a sturdy little walker and she braves all kinds of weather,
And when the rain or fog or mist drive rival crimps a-wreck,
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Little Bird
The father sits in his lonely room,
Outside sings a little bird.
But the shadows are laden with death and gloom,
And the song is all unheard.
The father's heart is the home of sorrow;
His breast is the seat of grief!
Who will hunt the paper for him on the morrow -
Who will bring him sweet relief
From wearing his thoughts with innocent chat?
Who will find his slippers and bring his hat?
Still the little bird sings
And flutters her wings;
The refrain of her song is, 'Gos knows best!
He giveth His little children rest.'
What can she know of these sorrowful things?
The mother sits by the desolate hearth,
And weeps o'er a vacant chair.
Sorrow has taken the place of mirth -
Joy has resigned to despair.
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Music In The Flat
When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat;
I had a taste for singing and playing and all that.
And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped
I would not stop
All practice, like so many wives who let their
music drop.
So I resolved to set apart an hour or two each day
To keeping vocal chords and hands in trim to sing and play.
The second morning I had been for half and hour or more
At work on Haydn’s masses, when a tap came at my door.
A nurse, who wore a dainty cap and apron, and a smile,
Ran down to ask if I would cease my music for awhile.
The lady in the flat above was very ill, she said,
And the sound of my piano was distracting to her head.
A fortnight’s exercises lost, ere I began them, when,
The following morning at my door, there came that tap again;
A woman with an anguished face implored me to forego
My music for some days to come – a man was dead below.
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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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 dark deeds,
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Duet
I was smoking a cigarette;
Maud, my wife, and the tenor McKey
Were singing together a blithe duet,
And days it were better I should forget
Came suddenly back to me,
Days when life seemed a gay masque ball
And to love and be loved as the sum of it all.
As they sang together the whole scene fled,
The room’s rich hangings, the sweet home air,
Stately Maud, with her proud blonde head,
And I seemed to see in her place instead
A wealth of blue-black hair,
And a face, ah! your face, - yours, Lisette,
A face it were wiser I should forget.
We were back – well, no matter when or where,
But you remember, I know, Lisette,
I saw you, dainty, and debonnaire,
With the very same look you used to wear
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Same Old Strain
Each day that I live I am persuaded anew,
A maxim I long have believed in, is true.
Each day I grow firmer in this, my belief,
Strong drink causes half the world's trouble and grief.
Do I take up a paper, I read of a fight,
Tom's fist in his eye deprived Jamie of sight;
Both fellows were drinking before it began,
And drink made a brute of a peaceable man.
Next, Jones kills his wife, such an awful affair!
She was throttled, and pounded, and drawn by the hair;
Cause-'Jones had been drinking-not in his sane mind.'
(Few men
are
who tip up the bottle, I find.)
Then, a man is assaulted and dirked in the dark
By two 'jolly boys' who are out on a 'lark;'
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Christmas Fancies
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago.
And etched on vacant places,
Are half forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know –
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,
We see, with strange emotion that is not free from fear,
That continent Elysian
Long vanished from our vision,
Youth’s lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.
When gloomy gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
And draws from youth’s recesses
Some memory it possesses,
And, gazing through the lens of time, exaggerates its worth,
When gloomy gray December is roused to Christmas mirth.
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Answers
What is the end of each man's toil,
Brother, O Brother?
A handful of dust in a bit of soil-
His name forgotten as centuries roll,
Though blazoned to-day on Glory's scroll;
For the lordliest work of brain or hand
Is only an imprint made on sand;
When the tidal wave sweeps over the shore
It is there no more,
Brother, my Brother.
Then what is the use of striving at all,
Brother, O Brother?
Because each effort or great or small
Is a step on the long, long road that leads
To the Kingdom of Growth on the River of Deeds:
And that is the kingdom no man can gain
Till he uses his hand and his mind and brain,
And when he has used them and learned control
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Ye Agents
These agent men! these agent men!
We hear the dreaded step again,
We see a stranger at the door;
And brace ourselves for war once more.
He bows and smiles. 'Walk in,' we say,
He smiles again. 'I come to-day,
Dear Madam, with a great invention;
And Sir, pray give me
your
attention;
Now here, you see, is something new,
And just the thing, my friends, for you.'
In vain we interrupt and say:
'We shall not buy of you to-day.'
'But, Madam, Sir, you have not seen
The beauties of this new machine;
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Ascension
I have been down in the darkest water-
Deep, deep down where no light could pierce;
Alone with the things that are bent on slaughter,
The mindless things that are cruel and fierce.
I have fought with fear in my wave-walled prison,
And begged for the beautiful boon of death;
But out of the billows my soul has risen
To glorify God with my latest breath.
There is no potion I have not tasted
Of all the bitters in life's large store;
And never a drop of the gall was wasted
That the lords of Karma saw fit to pour,
Though I cried as my Elder Brother before me,
'Father in heaven, let pass this cup!'
And the only response from the still skies o'er me
Was the brew held close for my lips to sup.
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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