Around the Year with Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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Love has so many ways of being sweet. 
   The timorous, rose-hued dawning of its reign 
   Before the senses waken; that dear pain 
Of mingled doubt and certainty: the fleet 
First moments when the clasped hands meet 
   In wordless eloquence; the loss and gain 
   When the strong billows from the deeper main 
Submerge the valleys of the incomplete; 
   The restless passion rising into peace; 
      The growing beauty of two paths that blend 
Into one perfect way. The glorious faith 
   That feels no fear of life's expiring lease;
      And that majestic victory at the end 
When love, unconquered, triumphs over death. 

 

SO MANY WAYS

I.

Earth has so many ways of being fair:
Its sweet young Spring, its Summer clothed in light,
Its regal Autumn trailing into sight
As Summer wafts her last kiss on the air.
Bold virile Winter with the wind-blown hair
And the broad beauty of a world in white.
Mysterious dawn, high noon, and pensive night,
And over all God's great worlds watching there.
The voices of the birds at break of day;
The smell of young buds bursting on the tree;
The soft suggested promises of bliss,
Uttered by every subtle voice of May;
And the strange wonder of the mighty sea,
Lifting its cheek to take the full moon's kiss.

II.

Love has so many ways of being sweet.
The timorous rose-hued dawning of its reign
Before the senses waken; that dear pain
Of mingled doubt and certainty: the fleet
First moment when the clasped hands meet
In wordless eloquence; the loss and gain
When the strong billows from the deeper main
Submerge the valleys of the incomplete.
The restless passion rising into peace;
The growing beauty of two paths that blend
Into one perfect way. The glorious faith
That feels no fear of life's expiring lease.
And that majestic victory at the end
When love, unconquered, triumphs over death.

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.

1st

This is the season of wooing and mating;
The heart of nature calls out for its own;
And God have pity on those who are waiting
The fair unfolding of Spring, alone .
For the fowls fly north in pairs together,
And two by two are the leaves unfurled,
And the whole intent of the wind and weather
Is to waken love in the thought of the world

GOD'S MOTTO

This is the season of wooing and mating,
The heart of Nature calls out for its own,
And God have pity on those who are waiting
The fair unfolding of Spring, alone.
For the fowls fly north in pairs together,
And two by two are the leaves unfurled,
And the whole intent of the wind and weather
Is to waken love, in the thought of the world.

Up through the soil where the grass is springing,
To flaunt green flags in the golden light,
Each little sprout its mate is bringing
(Oh, one little sprout were a lonely sight).
We wake at dawn with the silvery patter
Of bird-notes falling like showers of rain,
And need but listen to prove their chatter
The amorous echo of love's sweet pain.

In the buzz of the bee and the strong steed's neighing,
In the bursting bud and the heart's unrest,
The voice of Nature again is saying,
In God's own motto, that love is best.
For this is the season of wooing and mating,
The heart of Nature calls out for its own;
And oh, the sorrow of souls that are waiting
The soft unfolding of Spring, alone.

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.

 

 

2nd

Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last,
As forth from his bow-string barbed arrows are cast.

IV.

The October day had been luscious and fair
   Like a woman of thirty. A chill in the air
   As the sun faced the west spoke of frost lurking near
   All day the Sound lay without motion, and clear
   As a mirror, and blue as a blond baby's eyes.
   A change in the tide brought a change to the skies.
   The bay stirred and murmured and parted its lips
   And breathed a long sigh for the lost lovely ships,
   That had gone with the Summer.
                                 Its calm placid breast
   Was stirred into passionate pain and unrest.
   Not a sail, not a sail anywhere to be seen!
   The soft azure eyes of the sea turned to green.
   A sudden wind rose; like a runaway horse
   Unchecked and unguided it sped on its course.
   The waves bared their teeth, and spat spray in the face
   Of the furious gale as they fled in the chase.
   The sun hurried into a cloud; and the trees
   Bowed low and yet lower, as if to appease
   The wrath of the storm king that threatened them Close
   To the waves at their wildest stood Roger Montrose.
   The day had oppressed him; and now the unrest
   Of the wind beaten sea brought relief to his breast,
   Or at least brought the sense of companionship. Lashed
   By his higher emotions, the man's passions dashed
   On the shore of his mind in a frenzy of pain,
   Like the waves on the rocks, and a frenzy as vain.

   Since the day he first looked on her face, Mabel Lee
   Had seemed to his self sated nature to be,
   On life's troubled ocean, a beacon of light,
   To guide him safe out from the rocks and the night.
   Her calm soothed his passion; her peace gave him poise;
   She seemed like a silence in life's vulgar noise.
   He bathed in the light which her purity cast,
   And felt half absolved from the sins of the past.
   He longed in her mantle of goodness to hide
   And forget the whole world. By the incoming tide
   He talked with his heart as one talks with a friend
   Who is dying. "The summer has come to an end
   And I wake from my dreaming, " he mused. "Wake to know
   That my place is not here--I must go I must go.
  Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last,
   As forth from his bowstring barbed arrows are cast.
   I scoffed at the god with a sneer on my lip,
   And he forces me now from his chalice to sip
   A bitter sweet potion. Ah, lightly the part
   Of a lover I've played many times, but my heart
   Has been proud in its record of friendship. And now
   The mad, eager lover born in me must bow
   To the strong claims of friendship. I love Mabel Lee;
   Dared I woo as I would, I could make her love me.
   The soul of a maid who knows not passion's fire
   Is moth to the flame of a man's strong desire.
   With one kiss on her lips I could banish the nun
   And wake in her virginal bosom the one
   Mighty love of her life. If I leave her, I know
   She will be my friend's wife in a season or so.
   He loves her, he always has loved her; 'tis he
   Who ever will do all the loving; and she
   Will accept it, and still be the saint to the end,
   And she never will know what she missed; but my friend
   Has the right to speak first. God! how can he delay?
   I marvel at men who are fashioned that way.
   He has worshiped her since first she put up her tresses,
   And let down the hem of her school-girlish dresses
   And now she is full twenty-two; were I he
   A brood of her children should climb on my knee
   By this time! What a sin against love to postpone
   The day that might make her forever his own.
   The man who can wait has no blood in his veins.
   Maurice is a dreamer, he loves with his brains
   Not with soul and with senses. And yet his whole life
   Will be blank if he makes not this woman his wife.
   She is woof of his dreams, she is warp of his mind;
   Who tears her away shall leave nothing behind.
   No, no, I am going: farewell to Bay Bend
   I am no woman's lover--I am one man's friend.
   Still-born in the arms of the matron eyed year
   Lies the beautiful dream that my life buries here.
   Its tomb was its cradle; it came but to taunt me,
   It died, but its phantom shall ever more haunt me. "

Three Women. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago ; New York : W.B. Conkey Company, 1897.
  194 p.,

3rd

And those gaunt-visaged duties, which so fill
Life's path by day, do borrow of Love's grace.
Though he be dear alway, and debonaire,
In the bright morning best he proves his skill,
Lending his luster to the commonplace

THREEFOLD I.

Our love wakes with the morning, unafraid
To meet the little worries of the day.
And if a haggard dawn, dull eyed and gray,
Peers in upon us through the window shade,
Full soon love's finger, rosy tipped, is laid
Upon its brow, and gloom departs straightway.
All outer darkness melts before that ray
Of inner light, whereof our love is made,
Each petty trouble and each pigmy care
And those gaunt visaged duties which so fill
Life's path by day, do borrow of love's grace.
Though he be dear alway, and debonaire
In the bright morning best he proves his skill
Lending his lustre to the Commonplace.

II.

Our love looks boldly in the moon's bold eyes.
He has no thing to hide, no thing to fear.
And if the world stands far or hurtles near
He walks alway, serene, without disguise,
Naked and not ashamed beneath the skies.
He does not need dark backgrounds to appear
Radiant, for even through the broad day's clear
Effulgence his supernal beauties rise.
Oh, there be loves that hide till day is done:
Nocturnal loves, like silent birds of prey:
Secretive loves that do not dare rejoice.
Ours is an eagle that can face the sun.
A wholesome love that glories in the day,
And finds a rapture in its own glad voice.

III.

Our love augments in beauty when the night
Shuts in our world between four sheltering walls.
Fair is the day and yet its splendor palls.
Dear are the shadows that obscure the light,
And dear the stars that tiptoe into sight,
And when the curtain of deep darkness falls
Then heart to heart in clearer accent calls
And the whole Universe is Love's by right.
There is no vexing world to interfere,
No sorrow save the all too rapid flow
Of time's swift river sweeping on and on.
We two are masters of this silent sphere.
Love is the only duty that we know--
Our only fear, the menace of the dawn.

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.

4th

With sullen May and blighted June,
Blurred dawn and haggard night,
This dear old world in space were hurled
If Love lent not his light.
Oh, Love stay near

COLEUR DE ROSE

I want more lives in which to love
This world so full of beauty,
I want more days to use the ways
I know of doing duty;
I ask no greater joy than this
(So much I am life's lover,)
When I reach age to turn the page
And read the story over,
(Oh love stay near!)

Oh rapturous promise of the Spring!
Oh June fulfilling after!
If Autumns sigh, when Summers die,
'Tis drowned in Winter's laughter.
Oh maiden dawns, oh wifely noons,
Oh siren sweet, sweet nights,
I'd want no heaven could earth be given
Again with its delights,
(If love stayed near!)

There are such glories for the eye,
Such pleasures for the ear,
The senses reel with all they feel
And see and taste and hear;
There are such ways of doing good,
Such ways of being kind,
And bread that's cast on waters fast
Comes home again, I find.
(Oh love stay near.)

There are such royal souls to know,
There is so much to learn,
While secrets rest in Nature's breast
And unnamed stars still burn.
God toiled six days to make this earth,
I think the good folks say--
Six lives we need to give full meed
Of praise--one for each day,
(If love stay near.)

But oh! if love fled far away,
Or veiled his face from me,
One life too much, why then were such
A life as this would be.
With sullen May and blighted June
Blurred dawn and haggard night,
This dear old world in space were hurled
If love lent not his light.
(Oh love stay near.)

Poems of sentiment by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago, IL : W. B. Conkey Company, c1906.

5th

Such love may be blindness, but where are love's eyes?
Such love may be folly, love seldom is wise.
Such love may be madness, was love ever sane?
Such love must be sorrow, for all love is pain

No, no. I have gambled with destiny twice,
And have staked my whole hopes on a home; but the dice
Thrown by Fate made me loser. Henceforward, I know
My lot must be homeless. The gods will it so.

I fought, I rebelled; I was bitter. I strove
To outwit the great Cosmic Forces, above,
Or beyond, or about us, who guide and control
The course of all things from the moat to the soul.

The river may envy the peace of the pond,
But law drives it out to the ocean beyond.
If it roars down abysses, or laughs through the land,
It follows the way which the Forces have planned.

So man is directed. His only the choice
To help or to hinder--to weep or rejoice.
But vain is refusal--and vain discontent,
For at last he must walk in the way that was meant.

My way leads through shadow, alone to the end
I must work out my karma, and follow its trend.
I must fulfill the purpose, whatever it be,
And look not for peace till I merge in God's sea.

Though bankrupt in joy, still my life has its gain;
I have climbed the last round in the ladder of pain.
There is nothing to dread. I have drained sorrow's cup
And can laugh as I fling it at Fate bottom up.

I have missed what I sought; yet I missed not the whole.
The best part of love is in loving. My soul
Is enriched by its prodigal gifts. Still, to give
And to ask no return, is my lot while I live.

Such love may be blindness, but where are love's eyes?
Such love may be folly, love seldom is wise.
Such love may be madness, was love ever sane?
Such love must be sorrow, for all love is pain.

Love goes where it must go, and in its own season.
Love cannot be banished by will or by reason.
Love gave back your freedom, it keeps me its slave.
I shall walk in its fetters, unloved, to my grave.

So be it. What right has the ant, in the dust,
To cry that the world is all wrong, and unjust,
Because the swift foot of a messenger trod
Down the home, and the hopes, that were built in the sod?

What is man but an ant, in this universe scheme?
Though dear his ambition, and precious his dream,
God's messengers speed all unseen on their way,
And the plans of a lifetime go down in a day

No matter. The aim of the Infinite mind,
Which lies back of it all, must be great, must be kind.
Can the ant or the man, though ingenious and wise,
Swing the tides of the sea--set a star in the skies?

Can man fling a million of worlds into space,
To whirl on their orbits with system and grace?
Can he color a sunset, or create a seed,
Or fashion one leaf of the commonest weed?

Can man summon daylight, or bid the night fall?
Then how dare he question the Force which does all?
Where so much is flawless, where so much is grand,
All, all must be right, could our souls understand.

Ah, man, the poor egotist! Think with what pride
He boasts his small knowledge of star and of tide.
But when fortune fails him, or when a hope dies,
The Maker of stars and of seas he denies!

I questioned, I doubted. But that is all past;
I have learned the true secret of living at last.
It is, to accept what Fate sends, and to know
That the one thing God wishes of man--is to grow.

Growth, growth out of self, back to him--the First Cause:
Therein lies the purpose, the law of all laws.
Tears, grief, disappointment, well, what are all these
To the Builder of stars and the Maker of seas?

Does the star long to shine, when He tells it to set,
As the heart would remember when told to forget?
Does the sea moan for flood tide, when bid to be low,
As a soul cries for pleasure when given life's woe?

In the Antarctic regions a volcano glows,
While low at its base lie the up-reaching snows.
With patient persistence they steadily climb,
And the flame will be quenched in the passage of time.

My heart is the crater, my will is the snow,
Which yet may extinguish its volcanic glow.
When self is once conquered, the end comes to pain,
And that is the goal which I seek to attain.

I seek it in work, heaven planned, heaven sent;
In the kingdom of toil waits the crown of content.
Work, work! ah, how high and divine was its birth,
When God, the first laborer, fashioned the earth.

The world cries for workers; not toilers for pelf,
But souls who have sought to eliminate self.
Can the lame lead the race? Can the blind guide the blind?
We must better ourselves ere we better our kind.

There are wrongs to be righted; and first of them all,
Is to lift up the leaners from Charity's thrall.
Sweet, wisdomless Charity, sowing the seed
Which it seeks to uproot, of dependence and need.

For vain is the effort to give man content
By clothing his body, by paying his rent.
The garment re-tatters, the rent day recurs;
Who seeks to serve God by such charity errs.

Give light to the spirit, give strength to the mind,
And the body soon cares for itself, you will find.
First, faith in God's wisdom, then purpose and will,
And, like mist before sunlight, shall vanish each ill.

To the far realm of Wisdom there lies a short way.
To find it we need but the password--Obey.
Obey like the acorn that falls to the sod,
To rise, through the heart of the oak tree, to God.

Though slow be the rising, and distant the goal,
Serenity waits at the end for each soul.
I seek it. Not backward, but onward I go,
And since sorrow means growth, I will welcome my woe.

In the ladder of lives we are given to climb,
Each life counts for only a second of time.
The one thing to do in the brief little space,
Is to make the world glad that we ran in the race.

No soul should be sad whom the Maker deemed worth
The great gift of song as its dower at birth.
While I pass on my way, an invisible throng
Breathes low in my ear the new note of a song.

So I am not alone; for by night and by day
These mystical messengers people my way.
They bid me to hearken, they bid me be dumb
And to wait for the true inspiration to come

Around the year with Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago, W.B. Conkey Co., c1904.
Compiled by Ella Giles Ruddy

6th

When we declare we are brave enough to overcome
any fate, we find our strength put to the test at once.
But that is all right. We must prove our words true

Morning Influences

hat do you think about the very
first thing in the morning?
Your thoughts during the first
half-hour of the morning will
greatly influence the entire day.
You may not realize this, but it is
nevertheless a fact.
If you set out with worry, and depression,
and bitterness of soul toward fate or man, you
are giving the key note to a day of discords and
misfortunes.
If you think peace, hope and happiness, you
are sounding a note of harmony and success.
The result may not be felt at once, but it
will not fail to make itself evident eventually.
Control your morning thoughts. You can do it.
The first moment on waking, no matter what
your mood, say to yourself: "I will get all the
comfort and pleasure possible out of this day,
and I will do something to add to the measure of
the world's happiness or well-being. I will con-
trol myself when tempted to be irritable or un-
happy, I will look for the bright side of every
event."
Once you say these things over to yourself in
a calm, earnest way, you will begin to feel more
cheerful. The worries and troubles of the com-
ing day will seem less colossal.
Then say: "I shall be given help to meet
anything that comes to-day. Everything will be
for the best. I shall succeed in whatever I
undertake. I cannot fail."
Do not let it discourage you if the moment
you leave your room you encounter a trouble or
a disaster. This usually happens. When we
make any boasts, spiritually or physically, we
are put to the test. The occult forces about us
are not unlike human beings. When a school-
boy boasts of his strength, and says he can "lick
any boy in school," he generally gets a chance
to prove it.
When we declare we are brave enough to
overcome any fate, we find our strength put to
the test at once.
But that is all right. Prove your words to
be true.Regard the troubles and cares you en-
counter as the "punching bags" of fate, given
you to develop your spiritual muscle.
Go at them with courage and keep to your
morning resolve.
By and by the troubles will lessen, and you
will find yourself master of Circumstances.

The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago : The Psychic Research Company, c1902

7th

Don't look for the flaws as you go through life;
And, even when you find them,
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind,
And look for the virtue behind them

AS YOU GO THROUGH LIFE

Don't look for the flaws as you go through life;
And even when you find them,
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind,
And look for the virtue behind them;
For the cloudiest night has a hint of light
Somewhere in its shadows hiding:
It is better by far to hunt for a star,
Than the spots on the sun abiding.

The current of life runs ever away
To the bosom of God's great ocean.
Don't set your force 'gainst the river's course,
And think to alter its motion.
Don't waste a curse on the universe,
Remember, it lived before you:
Don't butt at the storm with your puny form,
But bend and let it go o'er you.

The world will never adjust itself
To suit your whims to the letter,
Some things must go wrong, your whole life long,
And the sooner you know it the better.
It is folly to fight with the Infinite,
And go under at last in the wrestle.
The wiser man shapes into God's plan,
As water shapes into a vessel.

Poems of sentiment by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago, IL : W. B. Conkey Company, c1906

8th

No matter how limited your sphere of action may
seem to you, and how small your town appears on the
map, if you develop your mental and spiritual forces
through love-thoughts you can be a power to move the
world along

Thought Force.

our spirit and mine are both part
of the stupendous cause. We have
always been, and always will be.
First in one form, then in another.
Every thought, word and deed
is helping decide your next place
in the Creator's magnificent universe. You will
be beautiful or ugly, wise or ignorant, fortunate
or unfortunate, according to what use you make
of yourself here and now.
Unselfish thoughts, training your mind to de-
sire only universal good, the cultivation of the
highest attributes, such as love, honesty, grati-
tude, faith, reverence and good will, all mean a
life of usefulness and happiness in another incar-
nation, as well as satisfaction and self-respect in
this sphere.
Even if you escape the immediate results of
the opposite course of action here, you must face
the law of cause and effect in the next state. It
is inevitable. God, the maker of all things, does
not change His laws. "As you sow you reap."
"As a man thinketh so is he." There is no "re-
venge" in God's mind. He simply makes His
laws, and we work our destinies for good or ill
according to our adherence to them or violation
of them.
Each one of us is a needed part of His great
plan. Let each soul say: "He has need of me or
I would not be. I am here to strengthen the
plan." Remember that always in your most dis-
couraged hours.
The Creator makes no mistakes.
There is a divine purpose in your being on
earth. Think of yourself as necessary to the
great design. It is an inspiring thought. And
then consider the immensity of the universe and
how accurately the Maker planned it all.
Do not associate with pessimists. If you are
unfortunate enough to be the son or daughter
husband or wife of one, put cotton (either real
or spiritual) in your ears, and shut out the poi-
son words of discouragement and despondency.
No tie of blood or law should compel you to
listen to what means discomfort and disaster to
you.
Get out and away, into the society of optim-
istic people.
Before you go, insist on saying cheerful, hope-
ful and bright things, sowing the seed, as it were,
in the mental ground behind you. But do not sit
down to see it grow.
Never feel that it is your duty to stay closely
and continously in the atmosphere of the despondent.
You might as well think it your duty to stay
in deep water with one who would not make the
least effort to swim.
Get on shore and throw out a life-line, but do
dot remain and be dragged under.
If you find any one determined to talk failure
and sickness and misfortune and disaster, walk
away.
You would not permit the dearest person on
earth to administer slow poison to you if you
knew it. Then why think it your duty to take
mental potions which paralyze your courage and
kill your ambition?
Despondency is one phase of immorality. It
is blasphemous and an insult to the Creator.
You are justified in avoiding the people who
send you from their presence with less hope and
force and strength to cope with life's problems
than when you met them.
Do what you can to change their current of
thought. But do not associate intimately with
them until they have learned to keep silent-- at
least, if they cannot speak hopefully.
Learn how to walk, how to poise your body,
how to breathe, how to hold your head, how to
focus your mind on things of universal import-
ance. Believe your tender, loving thoughts and
wishes for good to all humanity have power
to help the struggling souls of earth to rise to
higher and better conditions. No matter how
limited your sphere of action may seem to you
and how small your town appears on the map,
if you develop your mental and spiritual forces
through love thoughts you can be a power to move
the world along. Rise up and realize your strength.
Not only will you be more useful and happy, but
you will grow more beautiful and keep your
youth.

The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago : The Psychic Research Company, c1902.

9th

As long as men have hearts that long for homes,
As long as men have hearts,
Hid often like the acorn in the earth,
Their inborn love of noble woman's worth,
Beyond all beauty's arts,
Shall stem the sensuous current of desire,
And urge the world's best thought to something higher,
As long as men have hearts that long for homes

INBORN

As long as men have eyes wherewith to gaze,
As long as men have eyes,
The sight of beauty to their sense shall be
As mighty winds are to a sleeping sea
When stormy billows rise.
And beauty's smile shall stir youth's ardent blood
As rays of sunlight burst the swelling bud;
As long as men have eyes wherewith to gaze.

As long as men have words wherewith to praise,
As long as men have words,
They shall describe the softly-moulded breast,
Where Love and Pleasure make their downy nest,
Like little singing birds;
And lovely limbs, and lips of luscious fire,
Shall be the theme of many a poet's lyre,
As long as men have words wherewith to praise.

As long as men have hearts that long for homes,
As long as men have hearts,
Hid often like the acorn in the earth,
Their inborn love of noble woman's worth,
Beyond all beauty's arts,
Shall stem the sensuous current of desire,
And urge the world's best thought to something higher,
As long as men have hearts that long for homes.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917

10th

Oh, Artist, Musician and Poet!
Three souls that were lent to the earth
To brighten with fingers of beauty
This bare; barren planet of dearth!
You dream of the glories of heaven,
And vainly are trying to show
To the gaze of the clay-fettered mortals
The things that no mortal shall know

IN VAIN

The artist looks down on his canvass,
And smothers a heart-weary sigh,
And he sees not the beautiful picture
That glows with the hues of the sky.
For a picture that cannot be painted
Burns into the artist's brain,
And he weeps as he sits at his easel,
And sobs through his sorrow, "In vain."

The poet reads over his poem,
The thoughts of a Heaven-lent soul--
And sweet as the ripple of waters
The beautiful sentences roll.
But a poem that cannot be written,
Burns into the poet's brain,
And he weeps in a passion of anguish,
And sobs through his sorrow, "In vain."

The musician sits at his organ,
And the air echoes sweet melodies.
But his heart cries for sounds that are better
Than the sounds that he draws from the keys.
For a chord that has never been sounded---
A passionate,---ecstatic strain.
And he weeps as he sits at the organ,
And sobs through his sorrow, "In vain."

Oh Artist, Musician and Poet!
Three souls that were lent to the earth
To brighten with fingers of beauty
This bare, barren planet of dearth!
You dream of the glories of Heaven,
And vainly are striving to show
To the gaze of the clay-fettered mortals,
The things that no mortal shall know.

1871

Shells by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Milwaukee: Hauser & Storey, 1873.

11th

In the main we must of necessity get from humanity
what we give to it. If we question our ability to win
friends or love, people will also question it

Opulence

o not go through the world talking
poverty and asking every one you
deal with to show you special con-
sideration because you are "poor"
and "unfortunate."
If you do this with an idea of
saving a few dollars here and there, you will
always have to do it, because you are creating
poverty conditions by your constant assertions.
It is a curious fact that the people who are
always demanding consideration in money mat-
ters demand the best that is going at the same
time.
I have known a woman to make a plea for
cut prices in a boarding house because she was so
poor, yet she wanted the sunniest room and the
best location the house afforded.
It is the charity patients who make the most
complaint of a physician's skill or a nurse's
attention.
If you cannot afford to do certain things, or
buy certain objects, don't. But when you decide
you must, decide too, that you will pay the price,
and make no whining plea of poverty.
There are two extremes of people in the world,
one as distasteful as the other. One is represent-
ed by the man who boasts of the costliness of
every possession, and invites the whole world to
behold his opulence and expenditure.
His clothes, his house, his servants, his habits,
seem no different to the observer from his neigh-
bor's, yet, according to his story, they cost ten
times the amount.
The other extreme is the man who dresses
well, lives well, enjoys all the comforts and
pleasures of his associates, yet talks poverty con-
tinually, and expects the entire community to
show him consideration in consequence.
Another thing to avoid is the role of the chron-
ically injured person.
We all know him.
He has a continual grievance. He has been
cheated, abused, wronged, insulted, disappointed
and deceived. We wonder how or why he has
managed to exist, as we listen to the story of his
troubles.
No one ever treats him fairly, either in busi-
ness or social life. Everybody is ungrateful, un-
kind, selfish, and he could not be made to believe
that these experiences were of his own making.
All of us meet with occasional blows from
fate, in the form of insults, or ingratitude, or
trickery from an unexpected source.
But if we got nothing else but those disappoint-
ing experiences from life, we may rest assured
the fault lies somewhere in ourselves.
We are not sending out the right kind of
mental stuff, or we would get better returns.

You never can tell what your thoughts will do
In bringing you hate or love,
For thoughts are things, and their airy wings
Are swift as a carrier dove.
They follow the law of the universe--
Each thing must create its kind,
And they speed o'er the track to bring you back
Whatever went out from your mind.

In the main, we must of necessity get from
humanity what we give to it. If we question our
ability to win friends or love, people will also
question it.
If we doubt our own judgment and discretion
in business, others will doubt it, and the shrewd
and unprincipled will take the opportunity given
by our doubts of ourselves, to spring upon us.
If in consequence we distrust every person
we meet, we create an unwholesome and un-
fortunate atmosphere about ourselves, which will
bring to us the unworthy and deceitful. Stand
firm in the universe. Believe in yourself. Be-
lieve in others.
If you make a mistake, consider it only an
incident.
If some one wrongs you, cheats, misuses or
insults you, let it pass as one of the lessons you
had to learn, but do not imagine that you are
selected by fate for only such lessons. Keep
wholesome, hopeful and sympathetic with the
world at large, whatever individuals may do.
Expect life to use you better every year, and it
will not disappoint you in the long run. For life
is what we make it.

The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago : The Psychic Research Company, c1902

12th

May 12 Time flies. In vain our prayers, our tears.
We can not tempt him to delays;
Down to the past he bears the years
And yet--Love stays.

TIME AND LOVE

Time flies. The swift hours hurry by
And speed us on to untried ways;
New seasons ripen, perish, die,
And yet love stays.
The old, old love--like sweet at first,
At last like bitter wine--
I know not if it blest or curst,
Thy life and mine.

Time flies. In vain our prayers, our tears,
We cannot tempt him to delays;
Down to the past he bears the years,
And yet love stays.
Through changing task and varying dream
We hear the same refrain,
As one can hear a plaintive theme
Run through each strain.

Time flies. He steals our pulsing youth,
He robs us of our care-free days,
He takes away our trust and truth,
And yet love stays.
O Time! take love! When love is vain,
When all its best joys die--
When only its regrets remain--
Let love, too, fly.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917

13th

It sometimes seems that God must be a woman--
He is expected to forgive so much

EPIGRAMS AND SAYINGS.

Environment is frequently mistaken for constancy.
Many a woman lives forty years true to some early
memory which forty days of close association with the
right man would have demonlished. It is circumstances
rather than any inherent difference in nature, that
causes woman to seem more constant to the past than
man.

Ingratitude on the part of my friend wounds me
scarcely more than to detect in him a hasty desire
to repay me for some material favor I have be-
stowed out of pure affection. Such a spirit turns
friendship into a mere money exchange, and ren-
ders kindness a matter of bargain and sale. How-
ever he may disguise the fact, it is the self-centered
man who is hypersensitive about incurring friendly
obligations. The really broad and noble nature ac-
cepts them in the spirit in which they are given,
confident that he can pay the debt, not to his
friends, but to humanity, as the true friend would
wish.

There is something vitally wrong in the blood of
man who reveals the same unhealed wound year
after year, for it is the impulse of a healthful nature
to heal wounds! So is there something radically
wrong in the make-up of the person who shows you
the same cankering sorrow year after year, for it is
also the wish and purpose of progressive nature
that we shall outgrow our early griefs. He who
does not, has a right to our pity but not to our ad-
miration.

I would rather be faithful to my future than to
my past, if it becomes a matter of choice.

Man is not satisfied with the same rude vehicles
and implements which he used two hundred years
ago, and why should he be blamed for progressing
also in the matter of creeds? Just as the torchlight
has given way to electricity, so must dogma give
way to a broader spirituality.

A man once rebuked me for not being orthodox.
"The faith of my childhood, learned at my mother's
knee, is good enough for me!" he said. But the
expanding soul cannot be blamed for finding the
faith of its childhood insufficient, any more than
the full grown man can be blamed for abandoning
the crib and the nursing-bottle of his infancy. It is
only by outgrowing the ideas of our ancestors that
the world advances.

The wife who devotes her self to covering up and
condoning the sins of a notoriously bad husband,
sets a poor example for other and better men.

The woman who clings to the memory of an un-
faithful man is not constant; she is merely stub-
born.

It is impossible for an absolutely passionless
woman to be either just or generous in her judg-
ments of humanity at large. It is a strange fact
that she needs an admixture of the baser phsyical
element, to broaden her spiritual vision, and
quicken her sympathies.

Some people make such an ado about their virtue,
we almost wish they would lose it.

What ever we intensely desire, must come to us.
It is only a question of the force and constancy of
our desire.

Marriage is like the opium habit; once contracted,
difficult to cure. That is why widows and widow-
ers are so prone to wed again, and again, even after
the most disastrous experiences.

The most difficult of arts, is that of companion-
ship to a loved one who is ill. Devotion alone is
not enough. You must possess the tact and self-
control, to show thoughtfulness without solicitude,
attention without anxiety. You must exhibit sym-
pathy, but hide all worry. Only one man in a hun-
dred can fill the trying position, and only one
woman in ten.

There are people who would like to get a "cor-
ner" on all the sympathy in the world. They are
never happy unless everybody they meet is feeling
sorry for them.

Men have broader views; they get outside of
themselves far more than women do. They dwell
less in their own emotions, and are consequently
more interesting companions.

When we cease to feel the neglect of one we
love, we begin not to love. Many a man congratu-
lates himself upon the fact that his wife is "becom-
ing more sensible," when she is really becoming in-
different.

I think the most cruel judgments in the world
come from the women who resent never having
been tempted themselves.

All beauty is a record of truth and harmony in a
past incarnation. If it divorces those qualities in
this life, it must expect deformity and discord in
the next.

Men boast of their infidelities, women conceal
them.

No soul ever transgressed a divine law without
injuring some innocent being. There is no absolute
individuality. We are all linked and lashed to-
gether by invisible and indissoluble threads, spun
down from the Great Source. When any man
attempts to extricate himself he but more hopeless-
ly interlaces and snarls the net-work which unites
us all.

God pardons a kind lie sooner than a vicious
truth.

The term "Ladies man" always suggest a frivol-
ous nature, some thing even more intolerable in a
man than in a woman.

Loneliness is an all-pervading consciousness of
self.

Many an overzealous reformer imagines he is
teaching morality, when he is really giving instruc-
tions in vice. It is dangerous to describe an evil
too closely, in order to warn against it. I have seen
hell so warmly depicted on canvas that a shivering
beggar drew near it fascinated, unmindful of the
cold church edifice opposite.

Were it not a seeming blasphemy, I should like to
improve upon the Bible injunction "Ask and ye
shall receive" in this wise: "Ask for others and ye
shall receive for yourselves!" For of this truth I
am certain, the more utterly forgetful we are of our
own needs in our anxiety for others, (not in mere
actions but in our deepest hearts) the more we are
remembered and cared for by divine forces.

It often seems in this world, when a soul is floun-
dering in a net-work of sin's weaving, striving to
extricate itself, that the devil like a great spider
comes along and spins new meshes about it.

Those who belong to each other spiritually, will
find each other and dwell together through eterni-
ties of love.

The most unfortunate being is he who has no one
dependent upon him for support. However poor
such a man may be, he is wise if he takes a cat, a
dog, or a blind beggar to care for, in order that he
may get out of himself.

Nothing flatters a man's vanity so much as being
told that he is not like other men.

It is better to believe in an error than in noth-
ing.

When we ask for long life we ask to weep over
many biers.

If there had been no God originally, the devout
belief of billions of souls in his existence would
long ago have called him into being. How curious,
then, if instead of God creating man, man created
God.

Wrinkles are only dimples grown old.

If to be constant with old friends, necessitates
staying back with old ideas, I must submit to the
accusation of fickleness. I claim the right to follow
the leadings of my spirit and my intelligence; no
matter what ties and associations are left in the
rear. I would rather merit the friendship of my
higher self, than the approbation of my companions
of the past.

The chivalry of the average man consists in de-
fending a woman against every man save himself.

It is the woman who feels the strongest in her
virtue and secure in her social position who is
most fearless in her efforts to uplift the afflicted
and unfortunate.

It may be true that whatever is choice is always
exclusive; but whatever is exclusive is not always
choice.

I sometimes think God must be a woman--He is
expected to forgive so much.

We warn our sons with loud voices against the
dangers of the wine cup and the gaming table; but
too many of us sit silent while our daughters con-
tract habits of malicious speaking and envious crit-
icism, which are quite as great evils in Society to-
day, as intemperance, or gambling.

You may as well talk of hiding the glory of the
sunrise from the earth, as the fervor of a great pas-
sion from the object which inspired it.

As a garment long worn becomes inpregnated
with the odors of the body, so the atmosphere of a
house becomes saturated with the essence of the
spiritual nature of its inhabitants.

Many a low rascal on earth, boasts of his noble
ancestors under ground.

Did you ever think how curious it is that a man
expects a whole Eternity of bliss from a Ruler who
denies him a single month of it here.

As malice creates malice, so often generosity
arouses generosity.

The fact that a man bears an excellent reputation
among men, is no proof that he may not be the
worst possible companion for a woman.

The world is full of good hearted yet short sight-
ed people who brand any man as an infidel whose
ideas of divine worship differ from their own.

Prayer is the key to heaven. It admits us to the
sacrament of angels.

A very benevolent heart is seldom coupled with
a cautious head.

There are triumphs sadder than any defeat; there
are joys more painful than any grief.

He who said that love, to be sincere, must be of
slow growth, that man was a fool.

As God said unto the darkened world, "Let
there be light" and there was light, so unto many
a slumbering heart he has said "Let there be love,"
and there was love. Radiant, glowing, eternal, as
is the splendor of the sun in the heavens.

Thoughtlessness is the consort of selfishness; and
the two are parents of crime.

When will a man ever learn that he can not offer
a greater insult to the woman he has once professed
to love, than to call her his "friend."

"Last times" are always sad.

It is the ripe fruit which falls when a south wind
shakes the tree.

He sat for more than an hour, trying to analyze
his feelings. When a woman does that, ten to one
she is in love. When a man does it, ten to one he
is not.

Men, women and emotions. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1893

14th

You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason,
And seem for a space to slay Love so;
But all in its own good time and season
It will rise and follow wherever you go

FROM THE GRAVE

When the first sere leaves of the year are falling,
I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled,
Out of the grave of a dead Past calling,
A voice I fancied for ever stilled.
All through winter, and spring, and summer,
Silence hung over that grave like a pall;
But, borne on the breath of the last sad comer,
I listened again to the old-time call.

It is only a love of a bygone season,
A senseless folly that mocked at me,
A reckless passion that lacked all reason:
So I killed it, and hid it where none could see.
I smothered it first to stop its crying,
Then stabbed it through with a good sharp blade:
And cold and pallid I saw it lying,
And deep---ah! deep was the grave I made.

But now I know that there is no killing
A thing like Love, for it laughs at Death.
There is no hushing, there is no stilling
That which is part of your life and breath.
You may bury it deep, and leave behind you
The land, the people that knew your slain;
It will push the sods from its grave, and find you
On wastes of water or desert plain.

You may hear but tongues of a foreign people,
You may list to sounds that are strange and new;
But, clear as a silver bell in a steeple,
That voice from the grave shall call to you.
You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason,
And seem for a space to slay Love so;
But, all in its own good time and season,
It will rise and follow wherever you go.
You shall sit sometimes, when the leaves are falling,
Alone in your heart, as I sit to-day,
And hear that voice from your dead Past calling
Out of the graves that you hid away.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917

15th

Give me new times, bright with a prosperous cheer,
In place of old, tear-blotted, burdened days;
I hold a sunlit present far more dear
And worthy of my praise

OLD AND NEW

Long have the poets vaunted, in their lays,
Old times, old loves, old friendship, and old wine.
Why should the old monopolise all praise?
Then let the new claim mine.

Give me strong new friends, when the old prove weak,
Or fail me in my darkest hour of need;
Why perish with the ship that springs a leak,
Or lean upon a reed?

Give me new love, warm, palpitating, sweet,
When all the grace and beauty leaves the old;
When like a rose it withers at my feet,
Or like a hearth grows cold.

Give me new times, bright with a prosperous cheer,
In place of old, tear-blotted, burdened days;
I hold a sunlit present far more dear,
And worthy of my praise.

When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through,
And all too narrow for the broadening soul,
Give me the fine, firm texture of the new,
Fair, beautiful and whole.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917.

16th

It sometimes takes the acid of a sin
To cleanse the clouded windows of the soul
So pity may shine through them

HIGH NOON

Time's finger on the dial of my life
Points to high noon! and yet the half-spent day
Leaves less than half remaining, for the dark,
Bleak shadows of the grave engulf the end.

To those who burn the candle to the stick,
The sputtering socket yields but little light.
Long life is sadder than an early death.
We cannot count on raveled threads of age
Whereof to weave a fabric. We must use
The warp and woof the ready present yields
And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink
How brief the past, the future, still more brief
Calls on to action, action! Not for me
Is time for retrospection or for dreams,
Not time for self-laudation or remorse.
Have I done nobly? Then I must not let
Dead yesterday unborn to-morrow shame.
Have I done wrong? Well, let the bitter taste
Of fruit that turned to ashes on my lip
Be my reminder in temptation's hour,
And keep me silent when I would condemn.
Sometimes it takes the acid of a sin
To cleanse the clouded windows of our souls
So pity may shine through them.

Looking back,
My faults and errors seem like stepping-stones
That led the way to knowledge of the truth
And made me value virtue; sorrows shine
In rainbow colors o'er the gulf of years,
Where lie forgotten pleasures.

Looking forth,
Out to the western sky still bright with noon,
I feel well spurred and booted for the strife
That ends not till Nirvana is attained.

Battling with fate, with men and with myself,
Up the steep summit of my life's forenoon,
Three things I learned, three things of precious worth,
To guide and help me down the western slope.
I have learned how to pray, and toil, and save:
To pray for courage to receive what comes,
Knowing what comes to be divinely sent;
To toil for universal good, since thus
And only thus can good come unto me;
To save, by giving whatsoe'er I have
To those who have not--this alone is gain.

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.

17th

She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul,
As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm's strife;
He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm,
And a peace which crowned her life

LOVE'S COMING

She had looked for his coming as warriors come,
With the clash of arms and the bugle's call;
But he came instead with a stealthy tread,
Which she did not hear at all.

She had thought how his armor would blaze in the sun,
As he rode like a prince to claim his bride;
In the sweet dim light of the falling night
She found him at her side.

She had dreamed how the gaze of his strange, bold eye
Would wake her heart to a sudden glow:
She found in his face the familiar grace
Of a friend she used to know.

She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul,
As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm's strife:
He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm,
And a peace which crowned her life.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917

18th

Passion, unsupported by the spirit, or brain, lasts a
week--a month--a year. Love, in its perfect com-
plexity, lasts forever--through life, death and eternity.

Love Lasts Forever.

Does love last: and, if so, how long?
It was in a conversation between two men, A and B, that
this question arose, which I was fortunate enough to hear.
A contends that love is but a mere passion or preference for
one to the exclusion of all others, aroused at first sight, which
subsides with time. B contends that there certainly exists
among human beings this feeling which we call love and which
lasts not for any definite time, but for life. No, that does not
exist, says A. It is only an haphazard saying that "they
loved each other all their lives," for it is not true of real life.

A talked of passion, B talked of love. A
understood only physical attraction. B under-
stood the spiritual affinity.
Another letter, signed "A Freethinker," comes
to me saying:
Is not matrimonial law a failure if two are not united
in spirit?
Most certainly it is.
Physical attraction is intense and powerful while
it lasts. But if it is not supplemented by spiritual
and mental attraction, it soon ends in discord and
disgust.
Nothing more horrible in life can be conceived by
the mind than two beings feeling they are tied
together by law, when the one physical bond which
formerly united them has become rags and tatters,
and no single taste, aspiration, emotion, ambition
or belief is in union. Yet thousands of such people
live together in what is termed the "holy bonds of
matrimony" and bear and rear children.
Such children are, I believe, in God's eyes, the
illegitimate spawn of earth.
Love not only makes birth legitimate. Love does
exist after youth departs and when beauty of form
and feature is no more.
Once really mated in spirit and in body, nothing
can separate two beings. Life cannot--sorrow,
sickness, misfortune cannot--death cannot.
The perfect love is threefold. It is mental, spir-
itual, and physical.
When two beings--a man and a woman--find
happy comradeship in their mental pursuits, sweet
sympathy in their religious ideas, and ecstasy in their
physical relations, neither time nor eternity can
put out the fires of love in their hearts.
Such marriages exist. Such loves are to be found
on earth to-day, and will be found in Paradise
to-morrow.
The physical tie is only one of a trinity. When
it is the only one, it tries to do duty for three, and
soon dies from exhaustion. And nothing is so dead
as dead passion.
When the spiritual comradeship exists between
two people, absence or separation only intensifies
their love for each other. Age makes no difference
in their sentiments, save to sweeten and strengthen
them.
With the background of the spiritual and mental
love, the physical attraction endures and is rejuven-
ated like the young leaves in an old forest with the
recurrence of each year. Passion, unsupported by
the spirit, or brain, lasts for a week--a month--a
year. Love, in its perfect complexity, lasts forever
--through life, death, and eternity.

Every-day thoughts in prose and verse. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1901

19th

Revolution and Evolution.

If men were only kinder,
   The world would all go right.
No ignorance is blinder
   Than that which seeks by might
To overcome disaster--
For Love alone is Master,
   And Love alone brings light.

Around the year with Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago, W.B. Conkey Co., c1904.
Compiled by Ella Giles Ruddy

20th

Nothing but good on the path can find you,
If good alone to the path you send.

Around the year with Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago, W.B. Conkey Co., c1904.
Compiled by Ella Giles Ruddy.
                                                 New Year Poem.

21st

Kin to the sun and sea and wind and sky,
A part of God's Omnipotence am I

OMNIPOTENCE

Musing at times on this vast Universe,
My pigmy self, abashed and mortified,
In patient silence, would henceforth abide,
Nor strive with its poor protest, to disperse
The seeming shadows from our one small world.
That Power which fashioned mountains, shaped the sea,
And into space a million planets hurled,
Could have no need of any aid from me.

The tiniest seed, what mind can understand
With all its hidden mysteries of bloom--
The whole grand system, by a Master planned,
For human interference leaves no room.
All things move onward to their certain goal;
What God conceived, God only can control.

Sudden the old cry breaks upon my ear,
The protest and appeal of the oppressed!
Something immortal wakens in my breast,
And answers to that call, "I hear, I hear!"
The burdens of the suffering world seem mine
And mine progression's healthful discontent.
My greater self proclaims itself divine--
Knows whence it came, and wherefore it was sent.

When the first ray pierced through chaotic night
My spirit was conceived by primal force,
And started on its way to gather light
And scatter it along earth's troubled course.
Kin to the sun and sea and wind and sky,
A part of the Omnipotence am I.

I am important to the perfect plan,
And I assist the purpose. As the sun
Completes the projects by the cause begun,
So His intentions are worked out by man.
In the construction of a great machine
The smallest parts are needed by the whole;
The mighty wheel is held by bolts unseen.
So in God's earth there is no useless soul.

We are the means to some majestic end,
Through us must come the universal good.
In us the forces of the Maker blend,
On us depends the larger brotherhood;
With us mankind must journey to the heights--
Let us go forth, and set God's world to rights!

Poems of Problems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey Company 1914.

22nd

If your purpose in life is a good and noble one, suc-
cess will come all the sooner to you. The invisible
powers work with the worthy more cheerfully than
with the ignoble toilers of earth. But they always
assist whoever is profoundly in earnest.

Believe in Yourself.

It took John P. Holland twenty-three years to
convince the United States government that
his submarine boat could conquer the greatest war-
ship that floated on the ocean; that he could dive
beneath the most terrific one afloat and destroy
it.
The government is convinced at last, this ought
to be a matter of encouragement to every struggling
soul.
Have you a cherished hope, ambition, or purpose
in life?
Are you discouraged because you do not gain the
ear or attention of the world?
Well, then, remember the persistence of Mr.
Holland with the submarine boat. If he could wait
twenty-three years to gain the attention of his audi-
ence, cannot you wait four, five, six years or
more?
He believed in himself and his hobby! Do you?
It all depends on your answer to that question.
If you are certain that you are right, and that you
have a theory, a plan, or an invention which will be
of use to humanity, then keep at it until you make
the whole world believe it, as Mr. Holland has.
There is no selfish, stupid, or inconsiderate society
of mortals which can remain impervious to one
human being's unswerving determination.
If you are in earnest--so in earnest that nothing
can divert you from your aim--the world will
eventually listen to you, and investigate your claim
to its attention.
If that claim has a solid and worthy foundation,
it will be recognized and acknowledged.
The greatest and most obstinate obstacles must
eventually give way before you; circumstance and
environment must yield to your effort. You will be
obliged to wait, and work, and hope against seem-
ing despair; but if what you are wanting is worth
the effort, you ought to be willing to do all this.
Make up your mind that you will dive beneath Fate's
most dangerous warships with your submarine boat
of determined purpose, and that no adverse condi-
tions of wave or weather shall circumvent you.
The human mind is the most powerful torpedo
boat ever made. Its inventor can make no mis-
takes, and the only thing is for man to realize the
wonder of the invention given into his hands, to do
with as he will. Whenever a frowning warship
looms up against the horizon, send out your sub-
marine torpedo thought boat and blow it up. You
are small and Fate is large; but your mental force
is as powerful as the little submarine boat, if you
know how to use it.
If your purpose in life is a good and noble one,
success will come all the sooner to you. The invis-
ible powers work with the worthy more cheerfully
than with the ignoble toilers of earth. But theyalways assist whoever is profoundly in earnest

Every-day thoughts in prose and verse. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1901

23rd

Love, when we met, 'twas like two planets meeting.
Strange chaos followed; body, soul, and heart
Seemed shaken, thrilled, and startled by that greeting.
Old ties, old dreams, old aims, all torn apart
And wrenched away, left nothing there the while
But the great shining glory of your smile

SURRENDER

Love, when we met, 'twas like two planets meeting.
Strange chaos followed; body, soul, and heart
Seemed shaken, thrilled, and startled by that greeting,
Old ties, old dreams, old aims, all torn apart,
And wrenched away, left nothing there the while
But the great shining glory of your smile.

I knew no past; 'twas all a blurred, bleak waste;
I asked no future; 'twas a blinding glare.
I only saw the present: as men taste
Some stimulating wine, and lose all care,
I tasted Love's elixir, and I seemed
Dwelling in some strange land, like one who dreamed.

It was a godlike separate existence;
Our world was set apart in some fair clime.
I had no will, no purpose, no resistance;
I only knew I loved you for all time.
The earth seemed something foreign and afar,
And we two, sovereigns dwelling in a star!

It is so sad, so strange, I almost doubt
That all those years could be, before we met.
Do you not wish that we could blot them out?
Obliterate them wholly, and forget
That we had any part in life until
We clasped each other with Love's rapture thrill?

My being trembled to its very centre
At that first kiss. Cold Reason stood aside
With folded arms to let a grand Love enter
In my Soul's secret chamber to abide.
Its great High Priest, my first Love and my last,
There on its altar I consumed my past.

And all my life I lay upon its shrine
The best emotions of my heart and brain,
Whatever gifts and graces may be mine;
No secret thought, no memory I retain,
But give them all for dear Love's precious sake;
Complete surrender of the whole I make.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917

24th

Sentiment goes hand-in-hand with love, and the two
can regenerate the world. Without them life is not
worth the living

Chicago's Non-Sentimental Club.

Chicago has a "Non-Sentimental Club." It is
composed of women who pride themselves
on being free, not only from sentimentalism, but
from sentiment also, it seems.
One of the women married an officer, I believe,
during the recent Spanish war. Her husband was
a "good fellow" whom she admired. Of course,
she would not think of loving any man in a senti-
mental manner. The bridegroom was ordered to
Cuba the day of the wedding. The wife did not
weep or ask to follow. She stayed at home and
attended her business. Of course, she is a
business woman. After some months her "busi-
ness" called her to Cuba. She violently asserted
this fact, lest any one should think she wished to go
to Cuba in order to be near her husband.
Now, of all the silly and obnoxious phases of the
"woman's movement," this club is the acme.
Fortunately it can only be regarded as a farce,
and I doubt if it expects to be taken seriously by
any one. But even as a farce, it seems to be a
failure.
It is not even funny. The woman without senti-
ment and romance in her nature is as unnatural as
a juiceless orange. She is a picture without per-
spective, or lights and shadows. She is a book
without plot, motive, or style.
Sentiment is to woman what perfume is to the
flower.
A man without sentiment is an unfortunate
being; a woman without it is a blemish on the face
of nature.
Instead of educating sentiment and romance out,
we should educate it into people.
It is the keynote to life--to happiness.
The best wife, mother, daughter, and sister is
always a woman of sentiment.
It is only when the thorny briars of duty are
made to blossom with the flowers of sentiment, that
life's hard tasks become endurable.
The best wife is the woman who idealizes her hus-
band, who surrounds him with a halo of romance
and sentiment, which in nineteen cases out of
twenty causes him to become the very being she
imagines him.
I know a mother whose constant idealizing senti-
ment toward a selfish and deplorably commonplace
son, resulted in his transformation into a thoughtful
and appreciative man who was worthy of her affec-
tion.
The "Non-Sentimentalists" talk about looking
"facts square in the face." They forget that it is
rude to stare. "Facts" resent such impoliteness on
our part. Why should we go about staring "facts"
out of countenance? We are told they "are stub-
born things." It is enough to make a fact stubborn
to eternally hear that phrase and to have people
forever staring it in the face.
Surround a fact with a little sentiment, place a
halo about its head and give it a sweet smile instead
of a cold stare, and you will find its stern exterior
quite susceptible to change and its "stubbornness"
giving way.
Sentiment goes hand in hand with love, and the
two can regenerate the world. Without them life
is not worth the living.

Every-day thoughts in prose and verse. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1901.

 

25th

I look in the eyes of doe and dove,
   And feel the sorrow of all dumb things,
   And know that we need not wait for wings
To carry the message of perfect love.
                                                 Humanity.

 

26th

One sorrow only in God's world has birth--
To live unloving and unloved on earth;
One joy alone makes life a part of heaven--
The joy of happy love received and given

Let Labor boldly walk abroad
And take its place with kings,
For who has labored more than God,
The maker of all things?

The time has come, aye, even now it is,
To rank that parable in Genesis
Of God's great curse of labor placed on man,
With other fairy tales. Why, He began
All work Himself! He was so full of force
He flung the solar systems on their course
And builded worlds on worlds; and, not content,
He labors still: when mighty suns are spent,
He forges on His white-hot anvil--space--
New stars to tell His glory and His grace.

Who most achieves is most like God, I hold;
The idler is the black sheep in the fold.

Not for the hardened toiler with the hoe
My tears of sorrow and compassion flow.
Though he be dull, unlettered and not fair
To look upon; tho' he is bowed with care,
Yet in his heart if dear love fold its wings,
He stands a monarch over unloved kings.

One sorrow only in God's world has birth--
To live unloving and unloved on earth;
One joy alone makes life a part of heaven--
The joy of happy love, received and given.

Down through the chaos of our human laws
Love shines supreme, the great Eternal Cause.
God loved so much His thoughts burst into flame,
And from that sacred source Creation came.
The heart which feels this holy light within
Finds God and man and beast and bird its kin.
All class distinctions fade and disappear.
Death is new life, and heaven he sees a-near.
Brother is he to "ox" and "seraphim,"
"Slave to the wheel," mayhap, yet kings to him,
And millionaires, seem paupers, if from them
Life has withheld its luminous great gem.
Or if his badge be sceptre, hoe or hod,
That man is king who knows that love is God.

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 190

27th

Somebody's sorrow is making me weep;
I know not her name, but I echo her cry
For the dearly bought baby she longed so to keep,
The baby that rode to its long resting sleep
In the little white hearse that went rumbling by

 

THE LITTLE WHITE HEARSE

Somebody's baby was buried to-day--
The empty white hearse from the grave rumbled back,
And the morning somehow seemed less smiling and gay
As I paused on the walk while it crossed on its way,
And a shadow seemed drawn o'er the sun's golden track.

Somebody's baby was laid out to rest,
White as a snowdrop, and fair to behold,
And the soft little hands were crossed over the breast,
And those hands and the lips and the eyelids were pressed
With kisses as hot as the eyelids were cold

Somebody saw it go out of her sight,
Under the coffin lid--out through the door;
Somebody finds only darkness and blight
All through the glory of summer-sun light;
Somebody's baby will waken no more.

Somebody's sorrow is making me weep:
I know not her name, but I echo her cry,
For the dearly bought baby she longed so to keep,
The baby that rode to its long-lasting sleep
In the little white hearse that went rumbling by.

I know not her name, but her sorrow I know;
While I paused on the crossing I lived it once more,
And back to my heart surged that river of woe
That but in the breast of a mother can flow;
For the little white hearse has been, too, at my door.

Poems of sentiment by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago, IL : W. B. Conkey Company, c1906.

 

28th

The souls whom the gods bless at birth
With the great gift of song, have been sent to the earth
To better and brighten it. Woe to the heart
Which lets its own sorrow embitter its art

 

God grinds His poor people to powder
All day and all night I can hear,
Their cries growing louder and louder.
Oh, God, have You deadened Your ear?

The chimes in old Trinity steeple
Ring in the sweet season of prayer,
And still God is grinding His people,
He is grinding them down to despair.

Mind, body and muscle and marrow,
He grinds them again and again.
Can He who takes heed of the sparrow
Be blind to the tortures of men?

V. In a bare little room of a tenement row
Of the city, Maurice sat alone. It was so
(In this nearness to life's darkest phases of grief
And despair) that his own bitter woe found relief.
Joy needs no companion; but sorrow and pain
Long to comrade with sorrow. The flowery chain
Flung by Pleasure about her gay votaries breaks
With the least strain upon it. The chain sorrow makes
Links heart unto heart. As a bullock will fly
To far fields when an arrow has pierced him, to die,
So Maurice had flown over far oceans to find
No balm for his wounds, and no peace for his mind.
Cosmopolitan, always, is sorrow; at home
In all countries and lands, thriving well while we roam
In vain efforts to slay it. Toil only, brings peace
To the tempest tossed heart. What in travel Maurice
Failed to find--self-forgetfulness--came with his work
For the suffering poor in the slums of New York.
He had wandered in strange heathen countries--had been
Among barbarous hordes; but the greed and the sin
Of his own native land seemed the shame of the hour.
In his gold there was balm, in his pen there was power
To comfort the needy, to aid and defend
The unfortunate. Close in their midst, as a friend
And companion, for more than twelve months he had dwelt.
Like a ray of pure light in a cellar was felt
This strong, wholesome presence. His little room bare
Of all luxuries, taught the poor souls who flocked there
For his counsel and aid, how by mere cleanliness
The grim features of want lose some lines of distress.
The slips from the plants on his window ledge, given
To beauty starved souls, spoke more clearly of heaven
And God than did sermons or dry creedy tracts.
Maurice was no preacher; and yet his kind acts
Of mercy and self-immolation sufficed
To wake in dark minds a bright image of Christ--
The Christ often heard of, but doubted before.
Maurice spoke no word of religion. Of yore
His heart had accepted the creeds of his youth
Without pausing to cavil, or question their truth.
Faith seemed his inheritance. But, with the blow
Which slew love and killed friendship, faith, too, seemed to go.

It is easy to be optimistic in pleasure,
But when Pain stands us up by her portal to measure
The actual height of our trust and belief,
Ah! then is the time when our faith comes to grief.
The woes of our fellows, God sends them, 'tis plain;
But the devil himself is the cause of our pain.
We question the wisdom that rules o'er the world,
And our minds into chaos and darkness are hurled.

The average scoffer at faith goes about
Pouring into the ears of his fellows each doubt
Which assails him. One truth he fails wholly to heed;
That a doubt oft repeated may bore like a creed.

Maurice kept his thoughts to himself, but his pen
Was dipped in the gall of his heart now and then,
And his muse was the mouthpiece. The sin unforgiven
I hold by the Cherubim chanting in heaven
Is the sin of the poet who dares sing a strain
Which adds to the world's awful chorus of pain
And repinings. The souls whom the gods bless at birth
With the great gift of song, have been sent to the earth
To better and brighten it. Woe to the heart
Which lets its own sorrow embitter its art.
Unto him shall more sorrow be given; and life
After life filled with sorrow, till, spent with the strife,
He shall cease from rebellion, and bow to the rod
In submission, and own and acknowledge his God.

Maurice, with his unwilling muse in the gloom
Of a mood pessimistic, was shut in his room.
A whistle, a step on the stairway, a knock,
Then over the transom there fluttered a flock
Of white letters. The Muse, with a sigh of content,
Left the poet to read them, and hurriedly went
Back to pleasanter regions. Maurice glanced them through:
There were brief business epistles from two
Daily papers, soliciting work from his pen;
A woman begged money for Christ's sake; three men
Asked employment; a mother wrote only to say
How she blessed him and prayed God to bless him each day
For his kindness to her and to hers; and the last
Was a letter from Ruth. The pale ghost of the past
Rose out of its poor shallow grave, with the scent
And the mold of the clay clinging to it, and leant
O'er Maurice as he read, while its breath fanned his cheek.

"Forgive me," wrote Ruth; "for at last I must speak
Of the two whom you wish to forget. Well I know
How you suffered, still suffer, from fate's sudden blow,
Though I am a woman, and women must stay
And fight out pain's battles where men run away.
But my strength has its limit, my courage its end,
The time has now come when I, too, leave Bay Bend.
Maurice, let the bitterness housed in your heart
For the man you long loved as a comrade, depart,
And let pity replace it. Oh, weep for his sorrow--
From your fountain of grief, held in check, let me borrow;
I have so overdrawn on the bank of my tears
That my anguish is now refused payment. For years
You loved Mabel Lee. Well, to some hearts love speaks
His whole tale of passion in brief little weeks.
As Minerva, full grown, from the great brow of Jove
Sprang to life, so full blown from our breasts may spring Love.
Love hid like a bee in my heart's lily cup;
I knew not he was there till his sting woke me up.
Maurice, oh, Maurice! Can you fancy the woe
Of seeing the prize which you coveted so
Misused, or abused, by another? The wife
Of the man whom I worshiped is spoiling the life
That was wax in her hands, wax to shape as she chose.
You were blind to her faults, so was Roger Montrose.
Both saw but the saint; well, let saints keep their places,
And not crowd the women in life's hurried races.
As saint, Mabel Lee might succeed; but, oh brother,
She never was meant for a wife or a mother.
Her beautiful home has the desolate air
Of a house that is ruled by its servants. The care--
The thought of the woman (that sweet, subtle power
Pervading some rooms like the scent of a flower),
Which turns house into home-- that is lacking. She goes
On her merciful rounds, does our Lady Montrose,
Looking after the souls of the heathen, and leaving
The poor hungry soul of her lord to its grieving.
He craves her companionship; wants her to be
At his side, more his own, than the public's. But she
Holds such love is but selfish; and thinks he should make
Some sacrifice gladly for charity's sake.
Her schools, and her clubs, and her fairs fill her time;
He wants her to travel; no, that were a crime
To go seeking for pleasure, and leave duty here.
God had given her work and her labor lay near.
A month of the theater season in town?
No, the stage is an evil that needs putting down
By good people. So, scheme as he will, the poor man
Has to finally yield every project and plan
To this sweet stubborn saint; for the husband, you see,
Stands last in her thoughts. He has come, after three
Patient years, to that knowledge; his wishes, his needs
Must always give way to her whims, or her creeds.
She knows not the primer of loving; her soul
Is engrossed with the poor petty wish to control ,
And she chafes at restriction. Love loves to be bound,
And its sweetest of freedom in bondage is found.
She pulls at her fetters. One worshiping heart
And its faithful devotion play but a small part
In her life. She would rather be lauded and praised
By a crowd of inferior followers, raised
To the pitiful height of their leader, than be
One man's goddess. There, now, is the true Mabel Lee!
Grieve not that you lost her, but grieve for the one
Who with me stood last night by the corpse of his son,
And with me stood alone. Ah! how wisely and well
Could Mabel descant on Maternity! tell
Other women the way to train children to be
An honor and pride to their parents! Yet she,
From the first, left her child to the nurses. She found
'Twas a tax on her nerves to have baby around
When it worried and cried. The nurse knew what to do,
And a block down the street lived Mama! 'twixt the two
Little Roger would surely be cared for. She must
Keep her strength and be worthy the love and the trust
Of the poor, who were yearly increasing, and not
Bestow on her own all the care and the thought--
That were selfishness, surely.
Well, the babe grew apace,
But yesterday morning a flush on its face
And a look in its eye worried Roger. The mother
Was due at some sort of convention or other
In Boston--I think 'twas a grand federation
Of clubs formed by women to rescue the Nation
From man's awful clutches; and Mabel was made
The head delegate of the Bay Bend Brigade.
Once drop in a small, selfish nature the seed
Of ambition for place, and it grows like a weed.
The fair village angel we called Mabel Lee,
As Mrs. Montrose, has developed, you see,
To a full fledged Reformer. It quite turned her head
To be sent to the city of beans and brown bread
As a delegate! (Delegate! magical word!
The heart of the queer modern woman is stirred
Far more by its sound than by aught she may hear
In the phrases poor Cupid pours into her ear.)
Mabel chirped to the baby a dozen good-byes,
And laughed at the trouble in Roger's grave eyes,
As she leaned o'er the lace ruffled crib of her son
And talked baby-talk: "Now be good, 'ittle one,
While Mama is away, and don't draw a long breath,
Unless 'oo would worry Papa half to death.
And don't cough, and, of all things, don't sneeze , 'ittle dear,
Or Papa will be thrown into spasms of fear.
Now, good-bye, once again, 'ittle man; mother knows
There is no other baby like Roger Montrose
In the whole world to-day."
So she left him. That night
The nurse sent a messenger speeding in fright
For the Doctor; a second for Grandmama Lee
And Roger despatched still another for me.
All in vain! through the gray chilly paths of the dawn
The soul of the beautiful baby passed on
Into Mother-filled lands.
Ah! my God, the despair
Of seeing that agonized sufferer there;
To stand by his side, yet denied the relief
Of sharing, as wife, and as mother, his grief.
Enough! I have borne all I can bear. The role
Of friend to a lover pulls hard on the soul
Of a sensitive woman. The three words in life
Which have meaning to me are home, mother and wife--
Or, rather, wife, mother and home. Once I thought
Men cared for the women who found home the spot
Next to heaven for happiness; women who knew
No ambition beyond being loyal and true,
And who loved all the tasks of the housewife. I learn,
Instead, that from women of that kind men turn,
With a yawn, unto those who are useless; who live
For the poor hollow world and for what it can give,
And who make home the spot where, when other joys cease,
One sleeps late when one wishes.
You left me Maurice
Left the home I have kept since our dear Mother died,
With such sisterly love and such housewifely pride,
And you wandered afar, and for what cause, forsooth?
Oh! because a vain, self-loving woman, in truth,
Had been faithless. The man whom I worshiped, ignored
The love and the comfort my woman's heart stored
In its depths for his taking, and sought Mabel Lee.
Well, I'm done with the role of the housewife. I see
There is nothing in being domestic. The part
Is unpicturesque, and at war with all art.
The senile old Century leers with dim eyes
At our sex and demands that we shock or surprise
His thin blood into motion. The home's not the place
To bring a pleased smile to his wicked old face.
To the mandate I bow; since all strive for that end,
I must join the great throng! I am leaving Bay Bend
This day week. I will see you in town as I pass
To the college at C----, where I enter the class
Of medical students--I fancy you will
Like to see my name thus--Dr. Ruth Somerville."

Maurice dropped the long, closely written epistle,
Stared hard at the wall, and gave vent to a whistle.
A Doctor! his sweet, little home-loving sister.
A Doctor! one might as well prefix a Mister
To Ruth Somerville, that most feminine name.
And then in the wake of astonishment came
Keen pity for all she had suffered. "Poor Ruth,
She writes like an agonized woman, in truth,
And like one torn with jealousy. Ah, I can see,"
He mused, "how the pure soul of sweet Mabel Lee
Revolts at the bondage and shrinks from the ban
That lies in the love of that sensual man.
He is of the earth, earthy. He loves but her beauty,
He cares not for conscience, or honor or duty.
Like a moth she was dazzled and lured by the flame
Of a light she thought love, till she learned its true name;
When she found it mere passion, it lost all its charms.
No wonder she flies from his fettering arms!
God pity you, Mabel! poor ill mated wife;
But my love, like a planet, shall watch o'er your life,
Though all other light from your skies disappear,
Like a sun in the darkness my love shall appear.
Unselfish and silent, it asks no return,
But while the great firmament lasts it shall burn."

Muse, muse, awake, and sing thy loneliest strain,
Song, song, be sad with sorrow's deepest pain,
Heart, heart, bow down and never bound again,
My Lady grieves, she grieves.

Night, night, draw close thy filmy mourning veil,
Moon, moon, conceal thy beauty sweet and pale,
Wind, wind, sigh out thy most pathetic wail,
My Lady grieves, she grieves.

Time, time, speed by, thou art too slow, too slow,
Grief, grief, pass on, and take thy cup of woe,
Life, life, be kind, ah! do not wound her so,
My Lady grieves, she grieves.

Sleep, sleep, dare not to touch mine aching eyes,
Love, love, watch on, though fate thy wish denies,
Heart, heart, sigh on, since she, my Lady, sighs,
My Lady grieves, she grieves

 

 

29th

Naught but good can come to me.
This is Love's supreme decree.
Since I bar my door to hate,
What have I to fear, O Fate?

 

FATE AND I

 

Wise men tell me thou, O Fate,
Art invincible and great.

Well, I own thy prowess; still
Dare I flount thee, with my will.

Thou canst shatter in a span
All the earthly pride of man.

Outward things thou canst control
But stand back--I rule my soul!

Death? 'Tis such a little thing--
Scarcely worth the mentioning.

What has death to do with me,
Save to set my spirit free?

Something in me dwells, O Fate,
That can rise and dominate.

Loss, and sorrow, and disaster,
How, then, Fate, art thou my master?

In the great primeval morn
My immortal will was born.

Part of that stupendous Cause
Which conceived the Solar Laws.

Lit the suns and filled the seas,
Royalest of pedigrees.

That great Cause was Love, the Source,
Who most loves has most of Force.

He who harbors hate one hour
Saps the soul of Peace and Power.

He who will not hate his foe
Need not dread life's hardest blow.

In the realm of brotherhood
Wishing no man aught but good.

Naught but good can come to me.
This is love's supreme decree.

Since I bar my door to hate,
What have I to fear, O Fate?

Since I fear not--Fate, I vow,
I the ruler am, not thou!

Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.

30th

The vision fled, but I think our dead,
If they could come back with the living,
Would clasp warm hands o'er hostile lands,
Forgetting old wrongs and forgiving

 

MEMORIAL DAY--1892

The quiet graves of our country's braves
Through thirty Junes and Decembers
Have solemnly lain under sun and rain,
And yet the Nation remembers.

The marching of feet and the flags on the street
Told once again this morning,
In the voice of the drum how the day had come
For those lowly beds' adorning.

Then swiftly back on Time's worn track
His three decades seemed driven,
And with startled eyes, I saw arise
From graves by fancy riven,

The Gray and the Blue in a grand review.
Oh, vast were the hosts they numbered:
As they wheeled and swayed in a dress parade
O'er the graves where they long had slumbered.

The colors were not, as when they fought,
Ranked one against the other,
But a mingled hue of gray and blue,
As brother marching with brother.

And a blue flower lay on each coat of gray
Like forget-me-nots on a boulder,
And the gray moss lace in its Southern grace
Was knotted on each blue shoulder.

The vision fled, but I think our dead,
If they could come back with the living,
Would clasp warm hands o'er hostile lands,
Forgetting old wrongs and forgiving.

'Mong the blossoms of Spring that you gather and bring
To graves that tho' lowly are royal,
Let the blue flower prevail, though modest and pale,
Since it speaks of the hue that was loyal.

But tie each bouquet with a ribbon of gray
And lay it on memory's altar,
For the dead who fought for the cause they thought
Was right, and who did not falter.

Poems of sentiment by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago, IL : W. B. Conkey Company, c1906

 

31st

He who prates
Of human nature's baseness and deceit
Looks in the mirror of his heart and sees
His kind therein reflected

 

DISTRUST

Distrust that man who tells you to distrust;
He takes the measure of his own small soul,
And thinks the world no larger. He who prates
Of human nature's baseness and deceit
Looks in the mirror of his heart, and sees
His kind therein reflected. Or perchance
The honeyed wine of life was turned to gall
By sorrow's hand, which brimmed his cup with tears,
And made all things seem bitter to his taste.
Give him compassion! But be not afraid
Of nectared Love, or Friendship's strengthening draught,
Nor think a poison underlies their sweets.
Look through true eyes---you will discover truth;
Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt.

Poetical works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edinburgh : W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1917.

 

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