Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“ No more than the Knight of to-day,
Who mars not the name with one blemish of shame,
But carries it clean through life’s fray.
p. 110To live for a cause; to endeavour
To make your deeds grace it; to try
And uphold its precepts for ever,
Is harder by far than to die.
For the battle of life is unending,
The enemy, Self, never tires,
And the true Knight must slay that sly foe every day,
Ere he reaches the heights he desires.
Sir Knight, have you pondered the meaning
Of all you have heard and been told?
Have you strengthened your heart for its weaning
From vices and faults loved of old? ”

“ And human life a troubled aimless stream;
And God is nowhere. Would God so deride
A loving creature’s faith?’ A voice replied,
‘The stream flows onward to the Source Supreme,
Where things that ARE replace the things that SEEM,
And where the deeds of all past lives abide.
Once at thy door Love languished and was spurned.
Who sorrow plants, must garner sorrow’s sheaf.
No prayers can change the seedling in the sod.
By thine own heart Love’s anguish must be learned.
Pass on, and know, as one made wise by grief,
That in thyself dwells heaven and hell and God.’
p. ”

“ The ground-floor of truth you have trod;
You stand on the typical threshold
Which leads to the temple above;
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
In the Kingdom of Friendship and Love.
As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
In hall, or asylum, shall end. ”

“ It is just the progress-driven plough of God,
Tearing up the well-worn custom-bounded sod;
Shaping out each old tradition-trodden track
Into furrows, fertile furrows, rich and black.
Oh, what harvests they will yield
When they widen to a field.
They will widen, they will broaden, day by day,
As the Progress-driven plough keeps on its way. ”

“ To hope, and to rejoice.
p. 9True wealth dwells not in things we own,
But in our use of things.
Who would command a conquered land
Must conquer first its heart.
Such might as Man has never known,
And power undreamed by kings,
And boundless strength would come at length
To one who used that art.
For now has dawned the People’s day:
A day of great unrest.
Nor king nor creed can still man’s need
Of time and space to grow.
All lands must shape a wider way,
For this eternal quest;
And Leisure yield a larger field
Where work-worn feet may go. ”

“ We give the dead,
The idle vagrant dead, the Potter’s Field;
Yet to the living not one inch of soil.
Nay, we take from them soil, and sun, and air,
To fashion slums and hell-holes for the race.
And to our poor we say, ‘Go starve and die
As beggars die; so gain your heritage.’
p. 61II That was a most uncanny dream; I thought the wraiths of those
Long buried in the Potter’s Field, in shredded shrouds arose;
They said, ‘Against the will of God
We have usurped the fertile sod,
Now will we make it yield.’
Oh! but it was a gruesome sight, to see those phantoms toil ”

“ For England’s King to-day are blent
Like rivers on one course.
But, ah! the light falls searching white
Down from the Throne of God.
Lord of the Earth and heavenly-spheres,
Creator of all things,
Thou who hast wrought great worlds from naught,
Give strength to England’s son. ”

“ Dear little Mothers, of Men to be.
It is only a dream; but the world grows wise,
And a mighty truth in the dream seed lies
That shall gladden the earth, in its time and place.
We must better the mothers to better the race.
A dream? nay, a vision, which all must see,
Dear little Mothers, of Men to be.
p. 57SCIENCE Alone I climb the steep ascending path
Which leads to knowledge. In the babbling throngs
That hurry after, shouting to the world
Small fragments of large truths, there is not one
Who comprehends my purpose, or who sees
The ultimate great goal. ”

“ Where caste, and colour prejudice, by countless feet down trod,
With old traditions crushed by Time, pave smooth the bridge of Love;
And all the creed that men shall heed
Is consciousness of God.
p. 34THE SQUANDERER God gave him passions, splendid as the sun,
Meant for the lordliest purposes; a part
Of nature’s full and fertile mother heart,
From which new systems and new stars are spun.
And now, behold, behold, what he has done!
In Folly’s court and carnal Pleasures’ mart
He flung the wealth life gave him at the start.
(This, of all mortal sins, the deadliest one.) ”

“ Oh, that mighty plough of God;
Hear it breaking through the sod!
p. 96GO PLANT A TREE God, what a joy it is to plant a tree,
And from the sallow earth to watch it rise,
Lifting its emerald branches to the skies
In silent adoration; and to see
Its strength and glory waxing with each spring.
Yes, ’tis a goodly, and a gladsome thing
To plant a tree.
Nature has many marvels; but a tree
Seems more than marvellous. It is divine. ”

“ For there lurks a thought
Back of thy song.
In art, all thought is wrong.
Re-string thy lyre; and let the echoes bound
To nothing but sweet sound.
Strike now the chords
And sing of
WORDS One day sweet Ladye Language gave to me
A little golden key.
p. 65I sat me down beside her jewel box
And turned its locks.
And oh, the wealth that lay there in my sight.
Great solitaires of words, so bright, so bright;
Words that no use can commonize; like God,
And Truth, and Love; and words of sapphire blue ”

“ Of ocean billows breaking on the shore
There sounds the voice of turmoil. But a tree
Speaks ever of companionship and rest.
Yea, of all righteous acts, this, this is best,
To plant a tree.
There is an oak (oh! how I love that tree)
Which has been thriving for a hundred years;
Each day I send my blessing through the spheres
To one who gave this triple boon to me,
Of growing beauty, singing birds, and shade.
Wouldst thou win laurels that shall never fade?
Go plant a tree.
p. 98PAIN’S PURPOSE How blind is he who prays that God will send
All pain from earth. Pain has its use and place ”

“ Their path was lit with one wan ray
From ghostly children’s eyes;
The little children who were never born;
And as they passed, the Angel laughed in scorn.
p. 17THE TRUTH TELLER The Truth Teller lifts the curtain,
And shows us the people’s plight;
And everything seems uncertain,
And nothing at all looks right.
Yet out of the blackness groping,
My heart finds a world in bloom;
For it somehow is fashioned for hoping,
And it cannot live in the gloom.
He tells us from border to border,
That race is warring with race;
With riot and mad disorder,
The earth is a wretched place ”

“ This is her day of days: her splendid hour
When joy is hers, though love is all unknown.
p. 32It has not dawned upon her childish heart.
But human triumph, in a temporal power,
Has crowned her queen upon a one-day throne—
The Little Lady of the Bullock Cart. ”

“ And nowhere is there known the crime of one unwelcome birth
From rights of parentage the sick and sinful are debarred;
For Matron Science keeps our house, and at the door stands guard.
We know the cure for darkness lies in letting in the light ”

“ Against life’s shores drift wrecks and derelicts.
(God rules, God rules alway.)
Right in the shadow of the lofty steeple,
Which crowns some costly edifice of faith,
Behold the throngs of hungry, unhoused people ”

“ But swifter moves my unimpeded thought,
Speeding from spot to spot—
Out and afar—
High as the highest star.
p. 38SONG OF THE RAIL Oh, an ugly thing is an iron rail,
Black, with its face to the dust.
But it carries a message where winged things fail;
It crosses the mountains, and catches the trail,
While the winds and the sea make sport of a sail;
Oh, a rail is a friend to trust.
The iron rail, with its face to the sod,
Is only a bar of ore;
Yet it speeds where never a foot has trod;
And the narrow path where it leads, grows broad ”

“ And the voices of babel find one tongue,
In the common language of toil.
Of priest, and warrior, and conquering king,
Of Knights of the Holy Grail,
Of wonders of winter, and glories of spring,
Always and ever the poets sing;
But the great God-Force, in a lowly thing,
I sing, in my song of the rail.
p. 40ALWAYS AT SEA Always at sea I think about the dead. ”

“ Nor linger in this sink of sin, since now you see, and know.
p. 13VICE
The third road was the fair high way, trod by the good and great.
I cried aloud to that vast crowd, and told my hapless fate.
They hurried all through door and wall and shut Convention’s gate.
I beat it with my bleeding hands: they must have heard me knock.
They must have heard wild sob and word, yet no one turned the lock.
Oh, it is very desolate, on Virtue’s path to stand,
And see the good folks flocking by, withholding look and hand. ”

“ So frail the shoulders for the loads that wait:
So bitter salt the virgin widow’s tears—
O Little Lady of the Bullock cart.
p. 33EAST AND WEST The Day has never understood the Gloaming or the Night;
Though sired by one Creative Power, and nursed at Nature’s breast;
The White Man ever fails to read the Dark Man’s heart aright ”

“ This is the creed that means the world’s salvation;
The birth of christ in every mortal mind.
(God rules, God rules alway.)
p. 49THE CURE You may talk of reformations, of the Economic Plan,
That shall stem the Social Evil in its course;
But the Ancient Sin of nations, must be got at in THE MAN.
If you want to cleanse a river, seek the source.
Ever since his first beginning, Man has had his way, in lust.
He has never learned the law of Self-Control ”

“ Seeking the welcome of my outstretched arms.
While all the world stands hushed and awed before
The proven splendour of the Fact Supreme.
p. 60THE EARTH I To build a house, with love for architect,
Ranks first and foremost in the joys of life. ”