Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“ And my path is strewn with the glories of June,
And I'm hedged about with its splendor.
Care flew over the hills, one day,
And I sang, as he swift retreated;
And Hope took his crown, and Joy settled down,
On the throne where Care had been seated.
Contentment hedged me all round about,
And Love built his blazing fire;
And Happiness poured his treasures out,
And left me with no desire.
I have walked breast high in a sea of bliss:
I have loved my God, and my brother.
There never before was a year like this--
There never can be another. ”

“ Now my ears were deafened by Mirth no longer--
The sounds of sorrow, and grief, and despair,
And my soul grew tender and kind to others;
My nature grew sweeter, my mind grew broad;
And I held all men to be my brothers,
Linked by the chastening rod.
My soul was lifted to God and heaven,
And when on my heart-strings fell again
The hands of Mirth and Pleasure, even,
There was never a discord to mar the strain.
For Pain, the musician, the soul-refiner,
Attuned the strings with a Master hand,
And whether the music be major or minor,
It is always sweet and grand. ”

“ And there in the vine-wreathed cot, let the summer slip away;
Ay! and I let the heart I had guarded forty years--
The heart that had never been stirred by love's wild hopes and fears--
I let it slip away to the maid with amber eyes,
With tresses dusky brown, and cheeks like th' sunset skies.
Ah! secret I tried to keep, ah! love I strove to hide!
But in the July twilight, I lingered at her side,
And, leaning by the rose tree, her tresses swept my cheek!
"Ah! sweet," I cried in a tremor, "I love you--let me speak!" ”

“ The future? I do not dread: it is neither dark nor bright.
I have had my day of joy--I have had my sorrow's night.
God helped me through the last--I do not know just how,
But He answered when I called Him, and why should I doubt him now?
Nor mortal eye can see, nor mortal heart conceive,
What He holdeth in His kingdom for the faithful that believe.
But I sometimes think the dream that was broken here for me,
I shall finish and complete by the shining Jasper sea. ”

“ I woke from the golden dream when I saw her on the breast
Of a fair-faced, beardless youth--when I saw his red lips pressed
Over and over again to the mouth, like a rose half blown,
And I heard her whispered words--"My only love, my own."
Hush! censure them not! His heart she toyed with even as mine.
He suffered keenly, I think, then knelt at another's shrine.
And she--speak softly of her--she died: she is only dust;
Died repentant--forgiven--and entered Heaven--I trust. ”

“ After years of toil and sorrow,
After losing youth and grace,
In the weary, foolish chase.
After weeks of bitter tears,
After months, and after years,
After waiting day on day,
Throwing love, and peace away,
I shall find the phantom nearing--
I shall find the shadows clearing.
I shall reach the thing I sought,
I shall reach, and find it--what?
Will it recompense, and pay
For the joys I cast away?
In the weary, weary race,
When I lost my youth, and grace?
Is it worth the wear, and strife--
Worth the best part of a life? ”

“ And some said 'twas a year full of sorrow,
And some, 'twas a year of delight.
Some, sitting in darkness and weeping,
Sob, "Oh. but the year was so long!"
And some, full of cheer, say the beautiful year
Was only one verse of a song.
To some it brought gladness and pleasure,
To others but sorrow and gloom.
It gave one the sweet orange blossoms,
Another, the dust of the tomb.
There are mothers to-day who are sitting,
With arms that are aching to hold
The small form of grace, and the dear little face,
And the head with its crown of spun gold ”

“ In the midnight of sorrow, I vainly have striven
To crush in my heart the sweet image hid there;
To banish the beautiful dreams that are thronging
The halls of my memory--dreams worse than vain;
For the one drop withheld, I am thirsting and longing,
For the one joy denied, I am weeping in pain.
I would not forget you. I live to remember
The beautiful hopes that bloomed but to decay,
And brighter than June glows the bleakest December,
When peopled with ghosts of the dreams passed away.
Once loving you truly, I love you forever ”

“ KING AND SIREN
The harsh king, Winter, sat upon the hills,
And reigned, and ruled the earth right royally.
He locked the rivers, lakes, and all the rills.
"I am no puny, maudlin king," quoth he,
"But a stern monarch, born to rule and reign,
And I will show my power to the end;
The summer's flowery retinue I've slain,
And taken the bold, free North-Wind for my friend.
"Spring, Summer, Autumn--feeble queens they were,
With their vast troops of flowers, birds, and bees,
And winds, that made the long, green grasses stir--
They lost their own identity in these. ”

“ And with mirth, and music, and song and feast,
We can honor and praise his name;
But we bring to the bed of the sainted dead,
Only these wreaths to-day;
Yet they speak with their bloom and sweet perfume,
More than our lips can say.
They speak of a love that can never die,
But strengthen and grow with time;
Of lives that blossom again on high,--
Of a faith and hope sublime.
They tell how a grateful nation's heart
Remembers her tried and true,
And how tears are shed for the honored dead,
For the boys who wore the blue. ”

“ It is sad to lean over a loved one,
And cover the face with a pall,
But who mourns, with bowed head, o'er a hope that is dead,
Has the bitterest sorrow of all.
God grant that this New Year may bring them,
Some other hope, fully as sweet;
May it cull the bright flowers from happiness' bowers,
And cast them in wreaths at their feet.
Despair and delight walk together;
The sunshine falls over the tomb;
And close by the weary, whose lives are all dreary,
Walk those who are crowned with earth's bloom. ”

“ Because we meet in the walks of life
Many a selfish creature,
It does not prove that this world of strife
Has no redeeming feature.
There is bloom, and beauty upon the earth,
There are buds and blossoming flowers,
There are souls of truth, and hearts of worth--
There are glowing, golden hours.
In thinking over a joy we've known,
We easily make it double.
Which is better by far, than to mope and moan,
Over sorrow and grief and trouble. ”

“ Of June is over the earth,
And the birds are singing together
In a wild, mad strain of mirth,
As the skies of June can be,
I would like to have the summons
Sent down from God to me.
I would not wait for the furrows--
For the faded eyes and hair;
But pass out swift and sudden,
Ere I grow heart-sick with care;
I would break some morn in my singing--
Or fall in my springing walk,
As a full-blown flower will sometimes
Drop, all a-bloom, from the stalk. ”

“ We live, and we love! and what grief can alarm us;
Darling, my darling, the world is our own!
Life never can rob us--death cannot disarm us
Of this, our vast riches, our wealth, love, alone.
The summer is dead! Did'st know it, my darling?
Did'st know that the winter walked over the earth?
The gold-breasted thrush, and the quaker-crowned starling
Make glad other lands, with their innocent mirth. ”

“ Two white hands clasped on an aching brow.
A blighted faith and a fond hope slain,
A shattered trust and a broken vow.
A matron holding a baby's shoe,
The hot tears gather, and fall at will
On the knotted ribbon of white and blue,
For the foot that wore it is cold and still.
An aged woman upon her bed,
Worn, and wearied, and poor and old,
Longing to rest with the happy dead.
And thus the story of life is told.
Where is the season of careless glee?
Where is the moment that holds no pain?
Life has its crosses from infancy
Down to the grave; and its hopes are vain. ”

“ Oh, she was guarded, and shielded from sorrow--
Kept from the shadows, and darkness, alway.
But she will lie, as the beggar to-morrow--
My love--oh my love!--that is buried to-day.
1870
WHEN I DIE
Often, when I am alone,
Thinking of the "things unseen;"
Things to our eyes never shown,
Hidden by the veil between
This world and eternity--
To be lifted by and by.
Oft the thought has come to me,
"Who will robe me, when I die."
When the night-time swiftly nears,
And my last sleep comes apace,
And the mourners' bitter tears
Fall above my dying face ”

“ Florabelle is a jilt--a coquette--a deceiver.
She angles for hearts, with soft words and sweet smiles.
Forewarned is forearmed, don't you trust or believe her,
Be deaf to her cooing, be blind to her wiles.
She has eyes, like the heart of a blue morning glory,
She has lips like a rose-bud just sprinkled with dew,
'Tis the old hackneyed tale, 'tis the same wretched story,
A woman all fair, yet all false, and untrue. ”

“ It likes a stream,
In its winter dream.
Ho! ho! old Time! you may chuckle and smile,
But Death may cheat you, and beat you yet;
What shall you say, if, after a while,
Ere the sun of my youth has set,
I go with him, to a closet dim,
And closing my eyes, in a long, long rest,
Lie white and cold,
And never grow old,
With my two hands clasped over my breast. ”

“ We both have entered sorrow's door;
Grief comes alike to you and me,
So we are of one family."
The richest nabob that I meet,
The poorest delver that I see,
Youth and old age upon the street,
Are one and all the same to me.
No heart that beats, but has its grief;
Nor wealth, nor youth, gives full relief;
And through the tears that sometimes fall
I claim relationship to all. ”

“ Thou dost not know how brave and strong
A woman's heart can be.
But few could hide so well and long
What mine has hid from thee.
So well, that should this idyl chance
To meet thine eye, my friend,
Thou'd scan it with a careless glance.
Nor dream to whom 'twas penned.
1872
A GOLDEN YEAR
Linger, linger, oh royal year!
For I grieve to see you dying.
Rest on the hilltops--loiter near;
Wait, O Time, in your flying.
For never, in all the twice ten years,
You have brought to build my twenty.
Never was one so free from tears--
So overflowing with plenty. ”

“ Through sorrow, and grief, and tears were wrung
From some o'er-burdened breast.
Though the words breathe only of mirth, and bloom,
And the strains are the gladdest and lightest,
Remember that after a night of gloom,
The rays of the sun are brightest.
The rain must fall, ere the spring-time grass
Grows tender, and green, and sweet.
Through the pangs of travail, a soul must pass,
Ere a song is born complete. ”

“ And burnished with amber dye,
And tipped with purple shadows,
The glory flameth high.
Fair, beautiful world of ours!
Fair, beautiful world, but oh.
How darkened by pain and sorrow,
How blackened by sin and woe,
The splendor pales in the heavens
And dies in a golden gleam,
And alone in the hush of twilight,
I sit, in a checkered dream.
I think of the souls that are straying,
In shadows as black as night,
Of hands that are groping blindly
In search of the shining light ”

“ And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.
There's the ghost of a Joy,
A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,
And the hands that destroy
Clasped it close, and it died at the withering touch.
There's the ghost of a love,
Born with joy, reared with Hope, died in pain and unrest,
But he towers above
All the others--this ghost: yet a ghost at the best.
I am weary, and fain
Would forget all these dead: but the gibbering host
Make the struggle in vain,
In each shadowy corner, there lurketh a ghost. ”

“ Than a spring in the desert sand,
Is a love that will last, with toil, and danger,
And strife on every hand.
Once in a while we find a friend
That will cling through good or ill,
Whose friendship follows us e'en to the end,
Be it up or adown the hill,
But the heart so true, and the love so tender,
And friendship's faithful smile,
Whether we dwell in squalor or splendor,
We find but "once in a while." ”

“ I can tell of banquet, and revel, and mirth,
Where I was king, for I ruled in might.
And the proudest and grandest souls on earth
Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight.
From the heads of kings, I have torn the crown,
From the heights of fame, I have hurled men down;
I have blasted many an honored name,
I have taken virtue, and given shame;
I have tempted the youth, with a sip, a taste,
That has made his future a barren waste. ”

“ Looks up and smiles, in that most sainted face,
And knowing he is well secured from harm
He falls asleep in that safe resting place.
To-night I am so weary, heart, and soul.
So worn out, with a thousand nameless ills.
My spirit longs intensely for its goal
And every fibre of my being thrills
With mighty yearning. "Oh, to be that child--
To lie upon my Saviour's breast." I weep,
"And looking on that face so meekly mild.
Forget my tears, and sweetly fall asleep."
It is not always so: sometimes the earth
And earthly friends, can satisfy my heart. ”

“ And she dreameth a dream, and her eye is wet.
And backward and forward the pendulum swings,
In the clock that never has rested yet.
And the matron smothers a half-drawn sigh,
As she thinks how her life is drifting by.
An old crone sits in her easy chair;
Her head is dropped on her aged breast.
The clock on the mantle ticketh there--
The clock that is longing now for rest.
And the old crone smiles, as the moments fly,
And thinks how her life is drifting by. ”