Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“ A faith that can hear God’s voice, alike in the quiet glen,
Or in the roar of the street, and over the noises of men.
p. 74And the need of the world is a creed that is founded on joy;
A creed with the turrets of hope and trust, no winds can destroy;
A creed where the soul finds rest, whatever this life bestows,
And dwells undoubting and unafraid, because it knows, it knows.
And the need of the world is love that burns in the heart like flame ”

“ No thrill of flesh or heart; no leap of blood;
No glowing fire, flaming to white desire
For mating and for motherhood:
Yet they bore children.
God! how mankind misuses Thy command,
To populate the earth!
How low is brought high birth!
p. 88How low the woman; when, inert as spawn
Left on the sands to fertilise,
She is the means through which the race goes on! ”

“ But now I recall the field of blooming clover, and the honey-laden bees, the glorious June sunlight, and the passion of youth in my heart; and I know that was happiness.
There are so many little things that make life beautiful. ”

“ It was like a Voice, a Voice from some other world calling to me,
Bringing glad tidings.
Now when I look about me, and see the great injustices of men,
See Idleness and Greed waited upon by luxury and mirth,
See prosperous Vice ride by in state, while footsore Virtue walks;
Now when I hear the cry of need rise up from lands of shameful wealth—
Yet down deep, deep in my heart there is an undertone of rapture.
It is like a Voice—it is a Voice—calling to me and saying:
‘Love rules triumphant.’
Now when each mile-post on the path of life seems marked by headstones,
p. ”

“ We have borne all the pains of travail in giving life to the race;
p. 92We have toiled and saved, for the masters, and helped them to power and place;
And when we asked for a pittance, they gave it with grudging grace.
On the bold, bright face of the dollar all the evils of earth are shown.
We are weary of love that is barter, and of virtue that pines alone;
We are out in the world with the masters: we are finding and claiming our own! ”

“ Do they say: ‘There is a woman with a great heart,
Loyal to her sex, and above envy and evil speaking?
There is a daughter, wife, mother, with a purpose in life:
She can be trusted to mould the minds of little children.
She knows how to be good without being dull;
p. 117How to be glad and to make others glad without descending to folly;
She is one who illuminates the path wherein she walks;
One who awakens the best in every human being she meets’?
Look into your heart, O Woman! ”

“ For the faith that can only thrive or grow in the solitude,
And droops and dies in the marts of men, where sights and sounds are rude;
That is not a faith at all, but a dream of a mystic’s heart;
Our faith should point as the compass points, whatever be the chart.
p. 75Our faith must find its centre of peace in a babel of noise;
In the changing ways of the world of men it must keep its poise ”

“ Can birth be made legitimate,
Unless
Love in its fulness bless.
Creation so ordains its lofty laws
That man, while greater in all other things,
Is lesser in the generative cause.
The father may be merely man, the male;
Yet more than female must the mother be.
The woman who would fashion
Souls, for the use of earth and angels meet,
Must entertain a high and holy passion. ”

“ My heart is eloquent with words to plead
Its cause of passion; but my questioning mind,
p. 110Knowing how love is blind,
Dwells on the pros and cons, and God knows what.
My heart cries with each beat,
‘She is so beautiful, so pure, so sweet,
So more than dear.’
And then I hear
The voice of Reason, asking: ‘Would she meet
Life’s common duties with good common sense? ”

“ I miss my boyhood’s faith in woman’s worth—
Torn from my heart, by ‘good folks’ of the earth.
p. 9THE YOUNGER BORN
The modern English-speaking young girl is the astonishment of the world and the despair of the older generation. Nothing like her has ever been seen or heard before. Alike in drawing-rooms and the amusement places of the people, she defies conventions in dress, speech, and conduct. She is bold, yet not immoral. She is immodest, yet she is chaste. She has no ideals, yet she is kind and generous. She is an anomaly and a paradox. ”

“ And we settle the problems of sex and birth by the law of the female will,
For never was one of us known by a male, or made to mother its kind,
Unless there went from our minds consent (or from what we call the mind) .
p. 34‘But you, the highest of all she-things, you gorge yourselves at your feasts,
And you smoke and drink in a way we think would lower the standard of beasts;
For a ring, a roof and a rag, you are bought by your males, to have and to hold,
And you mate and you breed without nature’s need, while your hearts and your bodies are cold. ”

“ Which hides a barren heart. She will be human—
Not saint or angel, but the superwoman—
Mother and mate and friend of superman.
She will bring strength to aid the larger Plan,
Wisdom and strength and sweetness all combined,
Drawn from the Cosmic Mind—
Wisdom to act, strength to attain,
And sweetness that finds growth in joy or pain. ”

“ So vast the power of the Road!
p. 73THE FAITH WE NEED Too tall our structures, and too swift our pace;
Not so we mount, not so we gain the race.
Too loud the voice of commerce in the land;
Not so truth speaks, not so we understand.
Too vast our conquests, and too large our gains;
Not so comes peace, not so the soul attains.
But the need of the world is a faith that will live anywhere ”

“ All women seem less loyal and less true,
Less worthy of men’s faith since I met you.
p. 40THE SUPERWOMAN What will the superwoman be, of whom we sing—
She who is coming over the dim border
Of Far To-morrow, after earth’s disorder
Is tidied up by Time? What will she bring
To make life better on tempestuous earth?
How will her worth
Be greater than her forbears? What new power
Within her being will burst into flower? ”

“ While we stroll like vagabonds forth to trails, or ships.
Gypsying, gypsying, just where fancy calls us;
Never mind what others say, or what others do.
p. 70Everywhere or foul or fair, liking what befalls us:
While you have me at your side, and while I have you.
Gypsying, gypsying, camp by hill or hollow;
Never mind the why of it, since it suits our mood.
Go or stay, and pay our way, and let those who follow
Find, upspringing from the soil, some small seed of good.
Gypsying, gypsying, through the world we wander:
Never mind the rushing years, that have come and gone. ”

“ Gone is the lustrous glory of the light.
No splendour rests in any mountain height,
No scene spreads fair and beauteous to the sight;
All, all seems dull and dreary to the eye
When love is lost.
Love lends to life its grandeur and its might;
Love goes, and leaves behind it gloom and blight;
Like ghosts of time the pallid hours drag by,
And grief’s one happy thought is that we die.
Ah, what can recompense us for its flight
When love is lost?
p. 50OCCUPATION There must in heaven be many industries
And occupations, varied, infinite ”

“ In simple pathways hand in hand with duty
(With faith and love, too, ever at her side) ,
May happiness be met in all her beauty
The while we search for her both far and wide.
Seeking for happiness we find the way
Doing the things we ought to do each day.
p. 20THE ISLAND OF ENDLESS PLAY Said Willie to Tom, ‘Let us hie away
To the wonderful Island of Endless Play.
It lies off the border of “No School Land,”
And abounds with pleasure, I understand.
There boys go swimming whenever they please
In a lovely river right under the trees.
And marbles are free, so you need not buy ”

“ Knowing all depths within the woman heart,
All joy, all pain, oh send the world more light.
Enlarge our sympathies; and let our minds
Turn from achievements of material things
To contemplation of Eternal truths.
p. 98Space throbs with egos, waiting for rebirth;
And mother-hearted women fill the earth.
Mother of Christ, show us the way to thin
The ranks of childless women, without sin.
p. 99THE TRINITY Much may be done with the world we are in,
Much with the race to better it ”

“ As you pass down the street does any one look on you and say,
‘There goes a good son, a true husband, a wise father, a fine citizen?
p. 116A man whose strong hand is ready to help a neighbour,
A man to trust’? And what do women say of you?
Unto their own souls what do women say?
Do they say: ‘He helped to make the road easier for tired feet?
To broaden the narrow horizon for aching eyes?
He helped us to higher ideals of womanhood’?
Look into your own heart and answer, O Average Man of the world,
Of the Christian world we call civilised. ”

“ Through three times three great months, is hers alone.
Man as an egotist is wounded when
He is not father. Woman when denied
The all-embracing rôle of motherhood
Rebels with her whole being. Oftentimes
Rebellion finds its only utterance
In shattered nerves, and lack of self-control;
Which gives the merry world its chance to cry
‘Old maids are queer.’
In far off Eastern lands
p. 97They think of God as Mother to the race;
Father and Mother of the Universe.
And mayhap this is why they make their girls
Wives prematurely, mothers over young,
Hoping to please their Mother God this way. ”

“ Pale little children toiling for the rich, in rooms where sunlight is ashamed to go;
The awful almshouse, where the living dead rot slowly in their hideous open graves.
And there were shameful things.
Soldiers and forts, and industries of death, and devil-ships, and loud-winged devil-birds,
All bent on slaughter and destruction. These and yet more shameful things mine eyes beheld:
Old men upon lascivious conquest bent, and young men living with no thought of God,
And half-clothed women puffing at a weed, aping the vices of the underworld,
p. ”

“ And never was one of us known by a male except by our wish and will.’
p. 35PROTEST To sit in silence when we should protest
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance and lust
The Inquisition yet would serve the law
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. ”

“ All other sinners may be cleansed and shriven;
Not these, not these.
Pass on, and meet God’s eyes.’
The vast brigade moved forward, and behind then walked the Angels,
Walked the sorrowful Revealing Angels.
p. 87THE WELL-BORN So many people—people—in the world;
So few great souls, love ordered, well begun,
In answer to the fertile mother need!
So few who seem
The image of the Maker’s mortal dream ”