Poems

Poems List

Explore poems from our collection

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Ah Goo Tongue

The Ah Goo Tongue

The queerest languages known to man,
Sanscrit, Hebrew, Hindoostan,
Are all translated and made as free
And comprehensive as A B C…

409
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Beautiful Blue Danube

The Beautiful Blue Danube

They drift down the hall together;
He smiles in her lifted eyes.
Like waves of that mighty river
The strains of the ‘Danu…

369
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

That's The Way

That's The Way

Just a little every dayThat's
the way!
Seeds in darkness swell and grow,
Tiny blades push through the snow;
Never any flower o…

486
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ten Thousand Men A Day

Ten Thousand Men A Day

All the world was wearying,
All the world was sad;
Everything was shadow-filled;
Things were going bad.
Then a rumour …

466
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sunshine And Shadow

Sunshine And Shadow

Life has its shadows, as well as its sun;
Its lights and its shades, all twined together.
I tried to single them out, one by one,

463
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Summer Song

Summer Song

The meadow lark’s trill and the brown thrush’s whistle
From morning to evening fill all the sweet air,

And my heart is as light as the …

413
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Spectres

Spectres


How terrible these nights are when alone
With our scarred hearts, we sit in solitude,
And some old sorrow, to the world unknown,
Doe…

402
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sounds From The Baseball Field

Sounds From The Baseball Field

Batter in the home place,
That was nobly done;
Try and get the first base-
Run!
Run
! RUN!
Ah, ther…

339
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sorrow's Uses

Sorrow's Uses

The uses of sorrow I comprehend
Better and better at each year’s end.


Deeper and deeper I seem to see
Why and wherefore i…

471
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Songs Of A Country Home

Songs Of A Country Home

I

Who has not felt his heart leap up, and glow
What time the tulips first begin to blow,
Has one sweet joy, still lef…

555
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Song Of The Aviator

Song Of The Aviator

You may thrill with the speed of your thoroughbred steed,
You may laugh with delight as you ride the ocean,
You may rush afar in your…

396
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Song Of The Spirit

Song Of The Spirit

Too sweet and too subtle for pen or for tongue
In phrases unwritten and measures unsung,
As deep and as strange as the sounds of the s…

434
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Smoke

Smoke


Last summer, lazing by the sea,
I met a most entrancing creature,
Her black eyes quite bewildered me---
She had a Spanish cast of featur…

422
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Solitude

Solitude


Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough…

754
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sign-Board

Sign-Board


I will paint you a sign, rumseller,
And hang it above your door;
A truer and better signboard
Than ever you had before.
I wi…

348
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Slain

Slain


Hollow a grave where the willows wave,
And lay him under the grasses,
Where the pitying breeze bloweth up from the seas,
And murmurs a …

394
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Shovel And Tongs

Shovel And Tongs

The Poker proposed to the shovel
That they should be man and wife,
'I think,' said he, 'that we could agree
As we journey along th…

416
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sestina

Sestina


I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth,
And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the sk…

416
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Robin's Mistake

Robin's Mistake

What do you think Red Robin
Found by a mow of hay?
Why, a flask brimful of liquor,
That the mowers brought that day
To slake …

432
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Searching

Searching


These quiet Autumn days,
My soul, like Noah's dove, on airy wings
Goes out and searches for the hidden things

Beyond the hill…

320
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Response

Response


I said this morning, as I leaned and threw
My shutters open to the Spring's surprise,
'Tell me, O Earth, how is it that in you
Year …

416
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Rich And Poor

Rich And Poor

By the castle-gate my lady stands,
Viewing broad acres and spreading lands.


Hill and valley and mead and plain
Are all he…

410
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Refuted

Refuted


‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’

It may be, yet I have not found it so.
In those first golden dreams of future fame

427
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Realisation

Realisation


Hers was a lonely, shadowed lot;
Or so the unperceiving thought,
Who looked no deeper than her face,
Devoid of chiselled lines of…

410