Certitude
There was a time when I was confident
That God's stupendous mystery of birth
Was mine to know. The wonder of it lent
New ecstasy and glory to the earth.
I heard no voice that uttered it aloud,
Nor was it written for me on a scroll;
Yet, if alone or in the common crowd,
I felt myself a consecrated soul.
My child leaped in its dark and silent room
And cried, 'I am,' though all unheard by men.
So leaps my spirit in the body's gloom
And cries, 'I live! I shall be born again.'
Elate with certitude towards death I go,
Nor doubt, nor argue, since I know, I know!
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Old Moon In The New Moon's Arms
The beautiful and slender young New Moon,
In trailing robes of pink and palest blue,
Swept close to Venus, and breathed low: 'A boon,
A precious boon, I ask, dear friend, of you.'
'O queen of light and beauty, you have known
The pangs of love - its passions and alarms;
Then grant me this one favour, let my own -
My lost Old Moon be once more in my arms.'
Swift thro' the vapours and the golden mist -
The Full Moon's shadowy shape shone on the night,
The New Moon reached out clasping arms and kissed
Her phantom lover in the whole world's sight.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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One Woman's History
'The maiden free, the maiden wed.
Can never, never be the same,
A new life springs from out the dead.
And with the speaking of a name-
A breath upon the marriage bed,
She finds herself a something new.
'Where lay the shallows of the maid
No plummet line the wife can sound;
Where round the sunny islands played
The pulses of the great profound
Lies low the treacherous everglade.
'A wife is like an unknown sea,
Least known to him who thinks he knows
Where all the shores of Promise be,
And where the islands of Repose-
And where the rocks that he must flee.'
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Introductory Verses
Oh, you who read some song that I have sung –
What know you of the soul from whence it sprung?
Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud
His secret thought unto the listening crowd?
Go take the murmuring sea-shell from the shore-
You have its shape, its colour – and no more.
It tells not one of those vast mysteries
That lie beneath the surface of the seas.
Our songs are shells, cast out by waves of thought;
Here, take them at your pleasure; but think not
You’ve seen the beneath the surface of the waves,
Where lie our shipwrecks, and our coral caves.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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A Sculptor
As the ambitious sculptor, tireless, lifts
Chisel and hammer to the block at hand,
Before my half-formed character I stand
And ply the shining tools of mental gifts.
I'll cut away a huge, unsightly side
Of selfishness, and smooth to curves of grace
The angles of ill-temper.
And no trace
Shall my sure hammer leave of silly pride.
Chip after chip must fall from vain desires,
And the sharp corners of my discontent
Be rounded into symmetry, and lent
Great harmony by faith that never tires.
Unfinished still, I must toil on and on,
Till the pale critic, Death, shall say, ''Tis done.'
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Saddest Hour
The saddest hour of anguish and of loss
Is not that season of supreme despair
When we can find no least light anywhere
To gild the dread, black shadow of the Cross;
Not in that luxury of sorrow when
We sup on salt of tears, and drink the gall
Of memories of days beyond recall—
Of lost delights that cannot come again.
But when, with eyes that are no longer wet,
We look out on the great, wide world of men,
And, smiling, lean toward a bright to-morrow,
Then backward shrink, with sudden keen regret,
To find that we are learning to forget:
Ah! then we face the saddest hour of sorrow.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Attainment
Use all your hidden forces.
Do not miss the purpose of this life,
and do not wait for circumstance
to mold or change your fate.
In your own self lies destiny.
Let this vast truth cast out all fear,
all prejudice, all hesitation.
Know that you are great --
great with divinity.
Do dominate environment, and enter into bliss.
Live largely, and hate nothing.
Hold no aim that does not chord
with universal good.
Hear what the voices of the silence say.
All joys are yours if you put forth your claim.
[...] Read more
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Forward
Let me look always forward. Never back.
Was I not formed for progress? Otherwise
With onward pointing feet and searching eyes
Would God have set me squarely on the track
Up which we all must labour with life's pack?
Yonder the goal of all this travel lies.
What matters it, if yesterday the skies
With light were golden, or with clouds were black?
I would not lose to-morrow's glow of dawn
By peering backward after sun's long set.
New hope is fairer than an old regret;
Let me pursue my journey and press on-
Nor tearful eyed, stand ever in one spot,
A briny statue like the wife of Lot.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Joy
My heart is like a little bird
That sits and sings for very gladness.
Sorrow is some forgotten word,
And so, except in rhyme, is sadness.
The world is very fair to me –
Such azure skies, such golden weather,
I’m like a long caged bird set free,
My heart is lighter than a feather.
I rise rejoicing in my life;
I live with love of God and neighbour;
My days flow on unmarred by strife,
And sweetened by my pleasant labour.
O youth! O spring! O happy days,
Ye are so passing sweet, and tender,
And while the fleeting season stays,
I revel care-free, in its splendour.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Finis
An idle rhyme of the summer time,
Sweet, and solemn, and tender;
Fair with the haze of the moon's pale rays,
Bright with the sunset's splendour.
Summer and beauty over the lands -
Careless hours of pleasure;
A meeting of eyes and a touching of hands -
A change in the floating measure.
A deeper hue in the skies of blue,
Winds from the tropics blowing;
A softer grace in the fair moons face,
And the summer going, going.
The leaves drift down, the green grows brown,
And tears with smiles are blended;
A twilight hour and a treasured flower, -
And now the poem is ended.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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