Ella Wilcox
Ella Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcoxwas an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion. Her most enduring work was "Solitude", which contains the lines, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone". Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth5 November 1850
life mortal wakes
If there be mortal without love,He wakes to no new life above.
moments till wasted work zeal
If you work with zeal and ardor till the night,You can only make the wasted moments right.
god great immortal life miracles toward
But to the tireless toiler toward the goal,Shall the great miracles of God be knownAnd life revealed, immortal and divine.
cruel ease help pain salt sweet tears
If I could only weep,I think sweet help with my salt tears would come,To ease the cruel pain that is so dumb,And will not let me sleep.
cannot maladies minor mortal talk worn
Talk health. The dreary, never-changing taleOf mortal maladies is worn and stale.You cannot charm, or interest, or pleaseBy harping on that minor chord, disease.
path sad talk wholly
Talk happiness. The world is sad enoughWithout your woes. No path is wholly rough.
love passionate
Oh! I know this truth, if I know no other,That passionate Love is Pain's own mother.
earth kinds lift people
The two kinds of people on earth that I meanAre the people who lift and the people who lean.
bitter burden found grief grows life majestic neither nor sympathy taste tonic
The life that neither grief nor burden knowsIs dwarfed in sympathy before its close.The life that grows majestic with the yearsMust taste the bitter tonic found in tears.
dark gain learn path
All in the dark we grope along,And if we go amissWe learn at least which path is wrong,And there is gain in this.
glad heart others passed safely trip understand
And I am glad my heart can say,When others trip and fall(Although I safely passed that way),""I understand it all.
force granite human offspring walls
The human Will, that force unseen,The offspring of a deathless Soul,Can hew the way to any goal,Though walls of granite intervene.
brand colossal great less pretension prove ready stubborn time
And if pretension for a time deceive,And prove me one too ready to believe,Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act,I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.
borrow earth laugh laughs sad trouble weep
Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own