Poems+by+Ella+Wheeler+Wilcox


 * //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 of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air. The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from a voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all. There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by. Succeed and give, and it helps you live, But no many can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordy train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain.

//** When You Go Away **//

When you go away, my friend, When you say your last good-bye, Then the summer time will end, And the winter will be nigh.

Though the green grass decks the heather, And the birds sing all day, There will be no summer weather After you have gone away.

When I look into your eyes, I shall thrill with deepest pain, Thinking that beneath the skies

I may never look again.

You will feel a moment’s sorrow, I shall feel a lasting grief; You forgetting on the morrow, I to mourn with no relief.

When we say the last sad word, And you are no longer near, And the winds and all the birds Cannot keep the summer here,

Life will lose its full completeness --- Lose it not for you, but me; All the beauty and the sweetness Each can hold, I shall not see


 * // The Farewell //**

‘Tis not the untried soldier new to danger Who fears to enter into active strife. Amidst the roll of drums, the cannon’s rattle, He craves adventure, and thinks not of life.

But the scarred veteran knows the price of glory, He does not court the conflict or the fray. He has no longing to rehearse that gory And most dramatic act, or wars dark play.

He who to love has always been a stranger, All unafraid may linger in your spell. My heart has known the warfare, and its danger. It craves no repetition- so farewell.