Books: Poems of Sentiment
E >>
Ella Wheeler Wilcox >> Poems of Sentiment
As we live on those heights, we must live
With the courage and pride of a god;
For the world, it has nothing to give
But the scourge of the lash and the rod.
Our thoughts must be noble and broad,
Our purpose must challenge men's gaze,
While we seek not their blame or their praise
As we live.
THE LADY AND THE DAME
So, thou hast the art, good dame, thou swearest,
To keep Time's perishing touch at bay
From the roseate splendour of the cheek so tender,
And the silver threads from the gold away.
And the tell-tale years that have hurried by us
Shall tip-toe back, and, with kind good-will,
They shall take the traces from off our faces,
If we will trust to thy magic skill.
Thou speakest fairly; but if I listen
And buy thy secret, and prove its truth,
Hast thou the potion and magic lotion
To give me also the HEART of youth?
With the cheek of rose and the eye of beauty,
And the lustrous looks of life's lost prime,
Wilt thou bring thronging each hope and longing
That made the glory of that dead Time?
When the sap in the trees sets young buds bursting,
And the song of the birds fills the air like spray,
Will rivers of feeling come once more stealing
From the beautiful hills of the far-away?
Wilt thou demolish the tower of reason,
And fling for ever down into the dust
The caution time brought me, the lessons life taught me,
And put in their places my old sweet trust?
If Time's foot-print from my brow is driven,
Canst thou, too, take with thy subtle powers
The burden of thinking, and let me go drinking
The careless pleasures of youth's bright hours?
If silver threads from my tresses vanish,
If a glow once more in my pale cheek gleams,
Wilt thou slay duty and give back the beauty
Of days untroubled by aught but dreams?
When the soft fair arms of the siren Summer
Encircle the earth in their languorous fold,
Will vast, deep oceans of sweet emotions
Surge through my veins as they surged of old?
Canst thou bring back from a day long-vanished
The leaping pulse and the boundless aim?
I will pay thee double, for all thy trouble,
If thou wilt restore all these, good dame.
HEAVEN AND HELL
While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face,
Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the hand
And taught my doubting heart to understand
That which has puzzled all the human race.
Full many a sage has questioned where in space
Those counter worlds were? where the mystic strand
That separates them? I have found each land,
And Hell is vast, and Heaven a narrow space.
In the small compass of thy clasping arms,
In reach and sight of thy dear lips and eyes,
There, there for me the joy of Heaven lies.
Outside, lo! chaos, terrors' wild alarms,
And all the desolation fierce and fell
Of void and aching nothingness, makes Hell.
LOVE'S SUPREMACY
As yon great Sun in his supreme condition
Absorbs small worlds and makes them all his own,
So does my love absorb each vain ambition,
Each outside purpose which my life has known.
Stars cannot shine so near that vast orb'd splendour;
They are content to feed his flames of fire:
And so my heart is satisfied to render
Its strength, its all, to meet thy strong desire.
As in a forest when dead leaves are falling
From all save some perennial green tree,
So one by one I find all pleasures palling
That are not linked with or enjoyed by thee.
And all the homage that the world may proffer,
I take as perfumed oils or incense sweet,
And think of it as one thing more to offer,
And sacrifice to Love, at thy dear feet.
I love myself because thou art my lover,
My name seems dear since uttered by thy voice;
Yet, argus-eyed, I watch and would discover
Each blemish in the object of thy choice.
I coldly sit in judgment on each error,
To my soul's gaze I hold each fault of me,
Until my pride is lost in abject terror,
Lest I become inadequate to thee.
Like some swift-rushing and sea-seeking river,
Which gathers force the farther on it goes,
So does the current of my love forever
Find added strength and beauty as it flows.
The more I give, the more remains for giving,
The more receive, the more remains to win.
Ah! only in eternities of living
Will life be long enough to love thee in.
THE ETERNAL WILL
There is no thing we cannot overcome
Say not thy evil instinct is inherited,
Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn,
And calls down punishment that is not merited.
Back of thy parents and grandparents lies
The Great Eternal Will. That, too, is thine
Inheritance; strong, beautiful, divine,
Sure lever of success for one who tries.
Pry up thy faults with this great lever, Will.
However deeply bedded in propensity,
However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet
Is that vast power that comes from Truth's immensity.
Thou art a part of that strange world, I say.
Its forces lie within thee, stronger far
Than all thy mortal sins and frailties are,
Believe thyself divine, and watch, and pray.
There is no noble height thou canst not climb.
All triumphs may be thine in Time's futurity,
If whatso'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt,
But lean upon the staff of God's security.
Earth has no claim the soul can not contest.
Know thyself part of that Eternal Source,
And naught can stand before thy spirit's force.
The soul's divine inheritance is best.
INSIGHT
On the river of life, as I float along,
I see with the spirit's sight
That many a nauseous weed of wrong
Has root in a seed of right.
For evil is good that has gone astray,
And sorrow is only blindness,
And the world is always under the sway
Of a changeless law of kindness.
The commonest error a truth can make
Is shouting its sweet voice hoarse,
And sin is only the soul's mistake
In misdirecting its force.
And love, the fairest of all fair things
That ever to man descended,
Grows rank with nettles and poisonous things
Unless it is watched and tended.
There could not be anything better than this
Old world in the way it began;
And though some matters have gone amiss
From the great original plan,
And however dark the skies may appear,
And however souls may blunder,
I tell you it all will work out clear,
For good lies over and under.
A WOMAN'S LOVE
So vast the tide of love within me surging,
It overflows like some stupendous sea,
The confines of the Present and To-be;
And 'gainst the Past's high wall I feel it urging,
As it would cry, "Thou, too, shalt yield to me!"
All other loves my supreme love embodies;
I would be she on whose soft bosom nursed
Thy clinging infant lips to quench their thirst;
She who trod close to hidden worlds where God is,
That she might have, and hold, and see thee first.
I would be she who stirred the vague, fond fancies
Of thy still childish heart; who through bright days
Went sporting with thee in the old-time plays,
And caught the sunlight of thy boyish glances
In half-forgotten and long-buried Mays.
Forth to the end, and back to the beginning,
My love would send its inundating tide,
Wherein all landmarks of thy past should hide.
If thy life's lesson MUST be learned through sinning,
My grieving virtue would become thy guide.
For I would share the burden of thy errors,
So when the sun of our brief life had set,
If thou didst walk in darkness and regret,
E'en in that shadowy world of nameless terrors,
My soul and thine should be companions yet.
And I would cross with thee those troubled oceans
Of dark remorse whose waters are despair:
All things my jealous, reckless love would dare,
So that thou mightst not recollect emotions
In which it did not have a part and share.
There is no limit to my love's full measure,
It's spirit-gold is shaped by earth's alloy;
I would be friend and mother, mate and toy,
I'd have thee look to me for every pleasure,
And in me find all memories of joy.
Yet though I love thee in such selfish fashion,
I would wait on thee, sitting at thy feet,
And serving thee, if thou didst deem it meet.
And couldst thou give me one fond hour of passion,
I'd take that hour and call my life complete.
THE PAEAN OF PEACE
With ever some wrong to be righting,
With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions
His torchlight has fearlessly cast,
He shows us tribes warring in legions,
In jungles of ages long passed.
Religion, forgetting her station,
Forgetting her birthright from God,
Set nation to warring with nation
And scattered dissension abroad.
Dear creeds have made men kill each other,
Fair faith has bred hate and despair,
And brother has battled with brother
Because of a difference in prayer.
But earth has grown wiser and kinder,
For man is evolving a soul:
From wars of an age that was blinder,
We rise to a peace-girdled goal.
Where once men would murder in treason
And slaughter each other in hordes,
They now meet together and reason,
With thoughts for their weapons, not swords.
The brute in humanity dwindles
And lessens as time speeds along,
And the spark of Divinity kindles
And blazes up brightly and strong.
The seer can behold in the distance
The race that shall people the world -
Strong men of a godlike existence
Unarmed, and with war banners furled.
No longer the bloodthirsty savage
Man's vast spirit strength shall unfold;
And tales of red warfare and ravage
Shall seem like ghost stories of old.
For the booming of guns and the rattle
Of carnage and conflict shall cease,
And the bugle-call, leading to battle,
Shall change to a paean of peace.
"HAS BEEN"
That melancholy phrase "It might have been,"
However sad, doth in its heart enfold
A hidden germ of promise! for I hold
WHATEVER MIGHT HAVE BEEN SHALL BE.
Though in
Some other realm and life, the soul must win
The goal that erst was possible. But cold
And cruel as the sound of frozen mould
Dropped on a coffin, are the words "Has been."
"She has been beautiful"--"he has been great,"
"Rome has been powerful," we sigh and say.
It is the pitying crust we toss decay,
The dirge we breathe o'er some degenerate state,
An epitaph for fame's unburied dead.
God pity those who live to hear it said!
DUTY'S PATH
Out from the harbour of youth's bay
There leads the path of pleasure;
With eager steps we walk that way
To brim joy's largest measure.
But when with morn's departing beam
Goes youth's last precious minute,
We sigh "'Twas but a fevered dream -
There's nothing in it."
Then on our vision dawns afar
The goal of glory, gleaming
Like some great radiant solar star,
And sets us longing, dreaming.
Forgetting all things left behind,
We strain each nerve to win it,
But when 'tis ours--alas! we find
There's nothing in it.
We turn our sad, reluctant gaze
Upon the path of duty;
Its barren, uninviting ways
Are void of bloom and beauty.
Yet in that road, though dark and cold,
It seems as we begin it,
As we press on--lo! we behold
There's Heaven in it.
MARCH
Like some reformer, who with mien austere,
Neglected dress, and loud insistent tones,
More rasping than the wrongs which she bemoans,
Walks through the land and wearies all who hear,
While yet we know the need of such reform;
So comes unlovely March, with wind and storm,
To break the spell of winter, and set free
The poisoned brooks and crocus beds oppressed.
Severe of face, gaunt-armed, and wildly dressed,
She is not fair nor beautiful to see.
But merry April and sweet smiling May
Come not till March has first prepared the way.
THE END OF THE SUMMER
The birds laugh loud and long together
When Fashion's followers speed away
At the first cool breath of autumn weather.
Why, this is the time, cry the birds, to stay!
When the deep calm sea and the deep sky over
Both look their passion through sun-kissed space,
As a blue-eyed maid and her blue-eyed lover
Might each gaze into the other's face.
Oh! this is the time when careful spying
Discovers the secrets Nature knows.
You find when the butterflies plan for flying
(Before the thrush or the blackbird goes),
You see some day by the water's edges
A brilliant border of red and black;
And then off over the hills and hedges
It flutters away on the summer's track.
The shy little sumacs, in lonely places,
Bowed all summer with dust and heat,
Like clean-clad children with rain-washed faces,
Are dressed in scarlet from head to feet.
And never a flower had the boastful summer,
In all the blossoms that decked her sod,
So royal hued as that later comer
The purple chum of the goldenrod.
Some chill grey dawn you note with grieving
That the King of Autumn is on his way.
You see, with a sorrowful, slow believing,
How the wanton woods have gone astray.
They wear the stain of bold caresses,
Of riotous revels with old King Frost;
They dazzle all eyes with their gorgeous dresses,
Nor care that their green young leaves are lost.
A wet wind blows from the East one morning,
The wood's gay garments looked draggled out.
You hear a sound, and your heart takes warning -
The birds are planning their winter route.
They wheel and settle and scold and wrangle,
Their tempers are ruffled, their voices loud;
Then whirr--and away in a feathered tangle,
To fade in the south like a passing cloud.
Envoi
A songless wood stripped bare of glory -
A sodden moor that is black and brown;
The year has finished its last love-story:
Oh! let us away to the gay bright town.
SUN SHADOWS
There never was success so nobly gained,
Or victory so free from selfish dross,
But in the winning some one had been pained
Or some one suffered loss.
There never was so nobly planned a fete,
Or festal throng with hearts on pleasure bent,
But some neglected one outside the gate
Wept tears of discontent.
There never was a bridal morning fair
With hope's blue skies and love's unclouded sun
For two fond hearts, that did not bring despair
To some sad other one.
"HE THAT LOOKETH"
Yea, she and I have broken God's command,
And in His sight are branded with our shame.
And yet I do not even know her name,
Nor ever in my life have touched her hand
Or brushed her garments. But I chanced to stand
Beside her in the throng! A sweet, swift flame
Shot from her flesh to mine--and hers the blame
Of willing looks that fed it; aye, that fanned
The glow within me to a hungry fire.
There was an invitation in her eyes.
Had she met mine with coldness or surprise,
I had not plunged on headlong in the mire
Of amorous thought. The flame leaped high and higher;
Her breath and mine pulsated into sighs,
And soft glance melted into glance kiss-wise,
And in God's sight both yielded to desire.
AN ERRING WOMAN'S LOVE
PART I
She was a light and wanton maid:
Not one whom fickle Love betrayed,
For indolence was her undoer.
Fair, frivolous, and very poor,
She scorned the thought of toil, in youth,
And chose the path that leads from truth.
More women fall from want of gold
Than love leads wrong, if truth were told;
More women sin for gay attire
Than sin through passion's blinding fire.
Her god was gold: and gold she saw
Prove mightier than the sternest law
With judge and jury, priest and king;
So, made herself an offering
At Mammon's shrine; and lived for power,
And ease, and pleasures of the hour.
Who looks beneath life's outer crust
Is satisfied that God is just;
Who looks not under, but about,
Finds much to make him sad with doubt.
For Virtue walks with feet worn bare,
While Sin rides by with coach and pair:
Men praise the modest heart and chaste,
And yet they let it go to waste,
And follow, fierce to have and hold,
Some creature, wanton, selfish, bold.
She saw but this, life's outer side,
No higher faith was hers to guide;
She worshipped gold, and hated toil,
And hence her youth with all its soil,
With all its sins too dark to name,
Of secret crimes and public shame,
With all its trail of broken lives,
Of ruined homes, neglected wives,
And weeping mothers. Proud and gay
She went her devastating way
With untouched brow and fadeless grace.
Not time, but feeling, marks the face.
Sin on the outer being tells
Not till the startled soul rebels:
And she felt nothing but content.
She was too light and indolent
To worry over days to come.
This little earth held all life's sum,
She thought, and to be young and fair,
Well clothed, well fed, was all her care.
With pitying eyes and lifted head
She gazed on those who toiled for bread,
And laughed to scorn the talk she heard
Of punishment for those who erred,
And virtue's certain recompense.
She seemed devoid of moral sense,
An ignorant thing whose appetites
Bound her horizon of delights.
Men were her puppets to control;
Unconscious of a heart or soul
She lived, and gloried in the ease
She purchased by her power to please
The eye and senses. Life's one woe
Which caused her pitying tears to flow
Was poverty. Though hearts might break
And homes be ruined for her sake,
She showed no mercy. But when need
Of gold she saw, her heart would bleed.
The lack of clothing, fire, and food
Was earth's one pain, she understood.
The suffering poor oft blest her name,
Nor questioned whence the ducats came,
She gave so freely. Once she found
A fainting woman on the ground,
A wailing child clasped to her breast.
With her own hands she bathed and dressed
The weary waifs! gave food and gold
And clothed them warmly from the cold,
Nor guessed that one she lured from home
Had caused that suffering pair to roam
Unhoused, neglected. Then one day,
Unheralded across her way,
The conqueror came. She knew not why,
But with the first glance of his eye
A feeling, new and unexplained,
Woke in her what she oft had feigned.
And when his arm stole near her waist,
As startled maidens blush with chaste
Sweet fear at love's advances, so
She blushed from brow to breast of snow.
Strange, new emotions, fraught with joy
And pain commingled, made her coy;
But when he would have clasped her neck
With gems that might a queen bedeck
And offered gold, her lips grew white
With sudden anger at the sight
Of what had been her god for years.
She flung them from her. Then such tears
As only spring from love's despair
Welled from her eyes. "So, lady fair,
My gifts are scorned?" quoth he, and laughed.
"Like Cleopatra, you have quaffed
Such lordly pearls in draughts of wine,
You spurn poor simple gems like mine.
Well, well, fair queen, I'll bring to you
A richer gift next time. Adieu."
His light words stung like lash of whip;
With gasping breath and ashen lip
She strove to speak, but he was gone
She kneeled and pressed her mouth upon
The latch his hand had touched, the floor
His foot had trod, and o'er and o'er
She sobbed his name, as children moan
A mother's name when left alone.
Out from the dim and roseate gloom
And subtle odours of her room
Accusing memories rose. She felt
A loneliness that seemed to belt
The universe in its embrace.
It was as if from some high place
A giant hand had reached and hurled
To nothingness her petty world,
And left her staring, awed, alone,
Up into regions vast, unknown.
There is no other loneliness
That can so sadden and oppress
As when beside the burned-out fire
Of sated passion and desire
The wakening spirit, in a glance,
Beholds its lost inheritance.
She rose and turned the dim lights higher,
Brought forth rich gems and grand attire,
And robed herself in feverish haste;
Before the mirror posed and paced,
With jewels on her breast and wrists;
Then sudden clenched her little fists
And beat her face until it bled,
And tore her garments shred from shred,
Gazed in the mirror, spoke her name
And hissed a word that told her shame,
Then on her knees fell sobbing there.
There are sweet messengers of prayer
Who down through space on soft wings steal,
And offer aid to all who kneel.
Her lips, unused to pious phrase,
Recalled some words of bygone days,
And "Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,"
She whispered timidly, and then,
"Lord, let me be a child again
And grow up good." The strange prayer said,
Like some o'er-weary child, her head
She pillowed on her arm, and wept
Low, shuddering sobs, until she slept
And dreamed; and in that dream she thought
She sat within a vine-wreathed cot;
An infant slumbered on her breast,
She crooned a lullaby, and pressed
Its waxen hand against her cheek,
While one, too proud and fond to speak,
The happy father of the child,
Stood near, and gazing on them, smiled.
She woke while still the lullaby
Was on her lips--then such a cry,
As souls in fabled realms below
Might utter, voiced her awful woe.
The mighty moral labour-pain
Of new-born conscience wracked her brain
And tore her soul. She understood
The meaning now of womanhood,
And chastity, and o'er her came
The full, dark sense of all her shame.
As some poor drunken wretch, at night,
Wakes up to know his piteous plight,
And sees, while sinking in the mire,
Afar, his waiting hearth-light's fire;
So now she saw from depths of sin
The hearth-light of the might-have-been.
How beautiful, how like a star
That lost light shone, but ah, how far!
She reached her longing arms toward space,
And lifted up her tear-wet face.
"O God," she wailed, "I have been bad!
I see it all, and I am sad,
And long to be a good girl now.
Lord, Lord, will some one show me how?
Why, men have trod the burning track
Of sin for years, and then gone back!
And cannot I for sin atone,
Or did Christ die for men alone?
I want to lead an honest life,
I want to be his own true wife
And hold upon my breast his child."
Then suddenly her voice grew wild,
"No, no," she cried, "it could not be -
Those infant eyes would torture me:
Though God condoned my sinful ways,
I could not meet my child's pure gaze."
She hid her face upon her knees,
And swayed as reeds sway in a breeze.
"O Christ," she moaned, "could I forget,
There might be something for me yet:
But though both God and man forgave,
And I should win the love I crave,
Why, memory would drive me mad."
When woman drifts from good to bad,
To make her final fall complete,
She puts her soul beneath her feet.
Man's dual selves seem separate;
He leaves his soul outside sin's gate,
And finds it waiting when he tires
Of carnal pleasures and desires,
Depleted, sickened, and depressed,
As souls must be with such a test,
Yet strong enough to help him grope
Back into happiness and hope.
But woman, far more complicate,
Can take no chances with her fate;
A subtle creature, finely spun,
Her body and her soul are one.
And now this erring woman wept
The soul she murdered while it slept.
She felt too stunned with pain to think.
She seemed to stand upon a brink;
Behind her loomed the sinful past,
Below her, rocks, beyond her, vast
And awful darkness. Not one ray
Of sun or star to show the way!
She drew a long and shuddering breath;
"There is no other path but death
For me to tread," she sighed, "and so
I will prepare my house and go."
As housewives move with willing feet
And skilful hands to make things neat
And ready for some welcome one,
She toiled until her tasks were done.
Then, seated at her desk, she wrote,
With painful care, a tear-wet note.
The childish penmanship was rude,
Ill spelled the words, the phrasing crude;
Yet thought and feeling both were there,
And mighty love and great despair.
"Dear heart," it ran, "you did not know
How, from the first, I loved you so,
That sin grew hateful in my sight;
And so I leave it all to-night.
The kiss I gave, dear heart, to you
Was love's first kiss, as pure and true
As ever lips of maiden gave.
I think 'twill warm my lonely grave,
And light the pathway I must tread
Among the hapless, homeless dead.
"When God formed worlds, He failed to make
A path for erring feet to take
Back into light and peace again,
Unless they were the feet of men.
When woman errs, and then regrets,
Her sun of hope for ever sets,
And life is hung with deepest gloom.
In all the world there is no room
For such as she; and so I hold
That death itself is not so cold
As life has seemed, since by love's light
I saw there was a wrong and right,
And that my birthright had been sold,
By my own hands, for tarnished gold.
I hated labour, hence I fell;
But now I love you, dear, so well,
No greater boon my soul could crave
Than just to toil, a galley-slave,
Through burdened years and years of life,
If at the last you called me wife
For one supreme and honoured hour.
Alas! too late I learn love's power,
Too late I realise my loss,
And have no strength to bear my cross
Of loneliness and dark disgrace.
There cannot be another place
So desolate, so full of fear,
As earth to me, without you, dear.
"You will not understand, I know,
How one like me can love you so.
It was a strange, strange thing. Love came
So like a swift, devouring flame
And burned my frail, fair-weather boat
And left me on the waves afloat,
With nothing but a broken spar.
The distant shores seem very far;
I cannot reach them, so I sink.
God will forgive my sins, I think,
Because I die for love, like One
The good Book tells about, His Son.