POEMS OF PROGRESS AND NEW THOUGHT PASTELS
BY
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
GAY AND HANCOCK, LTD.
12 AND 13 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
LONDON
1913
[All rights reserved]
p. ivAny edition of my poems published in England by any firm except Messrs. Gay and Hancock is pirated and not authentic.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
April 12, 1910.
p. vPREFACE LOVE’S LANGUAGE
When silence flees before the voice of Love, Of what expression does that god approve? Is dulcet song or flowing verse his choice, Or stately prose, made regal by his voice? Speaks Love in couplets, or in epics grand? And is Love humble, or does he command?
There is no language that Love does not speak: To-day commanding and to-morrow meek, One hour laconic and the next verbose, With hope triumphant and with doubt morose, His varying moods all forms of speech employ. To give expression to his painful joy,
p. viTo voice the phases of his joyful pain, He rings the changes on the poet’s strain. Yet not in epic, epigram or verse Can Love the passion of his heart rehearse. All speech, all language, is inadequate, There are no words with Love commensurate.
p. viiCONTENTS
PAGE
Preface
v
The Land Between
1
Love’s Mirage
3
The Need of the World
4
The Gulf Stream
7
Remembered
8
Helen of Troy
9
Lais when Young
11
Lais when Old
12
Existence
13
Holiday Songs
15
Astrolabius
18
Completion
21
Sleep’s Treachery
24
Art versus Cupid
25
p. viiiThe Revolt of Vashti
33
The Choosing of Esther
37
Honeymoon Scene
42
The Cost
49
The Voice
52
God’s Answer
55
The Edict of the Sex
56
The World-child
59
The Heights
61
On seeing ‘The House of Julia’ at Herculaneum
63
A Prayer
64
What is Right Living?
66
Justice
67
Time’s Gaze
68
The Worker and the Work
70
Art thou Alive?
72
To-day
74
The Ladder
76
Who is a Christian?
78
The Goal
80
The Spur
82
p. ixAwakened!
84
Shadows
86
The New Commandment
88
Summer Dreams
90
The Breaking of Chains
92
December
94
‘The Way’
96
The Leader to be
98
The Greater Love
100
Thank God for Life
102
Time Enough
104
New Year’s Day
106
Life is a Privilege
108
In an Old Art Gallery
110
True Brotherhood
111
The Decadent
112
Lord, speak again
113
My Heaven
116
Life
118
God’s Kin
120
Conquest
121
The Statue
122
Sirius
124
At Fontainebleau
128
The Masquerade
129
Sympathy
131
Intermediary
133
Life’s Car
135
Opportunity
135
The Age of Motored Things
136
New Year
136
Disarmament
140
The Call
141
A Little Song
142
NEW THOUGHT PASTELS
A Dialogue
145
The Weed
147
Strength
148
Affirm
149
The Chosen
150
The Nameless
152
The Word
153
Assistance
155
‘Credulity’
156
Consciousness
157
The Structure
158
Our Souls
159
The Law
160
Knowledge
161
Give
163
Perfection
164
Fear
165
The Way
166
Understood
167
His Mansion
168
Effect
169
Three Things
170
Obstacles
171
Prayer
172
Climbing
173
‘There is no Death, There are no Dead’
174
Realisation
176
p. 1THE LAND BETWEEN
Between the little Here and larger Yonder, There is a realm (or so one day I read) Where faithful spirits love-enchained may wander, Till some remembering soul from earth has fled. Then, reunited, they go forth afar, From sphere to sphere, where wondrous angels are.
Not many spirits in that realm are waiting; Not many pause upon its shores to rest; For only love, intense and unabating, Can hold them from the longer, higher quest. And after grief has wept itself to sleep, Few hearts on earth their vital memories keep.
Should I pass on, across the mystic border, Let thy love link me to that pallid land; I would not seek the heavens of finer order Until thy barque had left this coarser strand. p. 2How desolate such journeyings would be, Though straight to Him, were they not shared by thee.
Wert thou first called (dear God, how could I bear it?) I should enchain thee with my love, I know. Not great enough am I to free thy spirit From all these tender ties, and bid thee go. Nor would a soul, unselfish as thine own, Forget so soon, and speed to heaven alone.
On earth we find no joy in ways diverging; How could we find it in the worlds unseen? I know old memories from my bosom surging, Would keep thee waiting in that Land Between, Until together, side by side, we trod A path of stars, in our great search for God.
p. 3LOVE’S MIRAGE
Midway upon the route, he paused athirst And suddenly across the wastes of heat, He saw cool waters gleaming, and a sweet Green oasis upon his vision burst. A tender dream, long in his bosom nursed, Spread love’s illusive verdure for his feet; The barren sands changed into golden wheat; The way grew glad that late had seemed accursed.
She shone, the woman wonder, on his soul; The garden spot, for which men toil and wait; The house of rest, that is each heart’s demand; But when, at last, he reached the gleaming goal, He found, oh, cruel irony of fate, But desert sun upon the desert sand.
p. 4THE NEED OF THE WORLD
I know the need of the world, Though it would not have me know. It would hide its sorrow deep, Where only God may go. Yet its secret it can not keep; It tells it awake, or asleep, It tells it to all who will heed, And he who runs may read. The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world, When it boasts of its wealth the loudest, When it flaunts it in all men’s eyes, When its mien is the gayest and proudest. Oh! ever it lies—it lies, For the sound of its laughter dies In a sob and a smothered moan, And it weeps when it sits alone. The need of the world I know.
p. 5I know the need of the world. When the earth shakes under the tread Of men who march to the fight, When rivers with blood are red And there is no law but might, And the wrong way seems the right; When he who slaughters the most Is all men’s pride and boast. The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world. When it babbles of gold and fame, It is only to lead us astray From the thing that it dare not name, For this is the sad world’s way. Oh! poor blind world grown grey With the need of a thing so near, With the want of a thing so dear. The need of the world I know.
The need of the world is love. Deep under the pride of power, Down under its lust of greed, For the joys that last but an hour, There lies forever its need. p. 6For love is the law and the creed And love is the unnamed goal Of life, from man to the mole. Love is the need of the world.
p. 7THE GULF STREAM
Skilled mariner, and counted sane and wise, That was a curious thing which chanced to me, So good a sailor on so fair a sea. With favouring winds and blue unshadowed skies, Led by the faithful beacon of Love’s eyes, Past reef and shoal, my life-boat bounded free And fearless of all changes that might be Under calm waves, where many a sunk rock lies.
A golden dawn; yet suddenly my barque Strained at the sails, as in a cyclone’s blast; And battled with an unseen current’s force, For we had entered when the night was dark That old tempestuous Gulf Stream of the Past. But for love’s eyes, I had not kept the course.
p. 8REMEMBERED
His art was loving; Eres set his sign Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew. Love feeds love’s thirst as wine feeds love of wine; Nor is there any potion from the vine Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew Inebriated with that draught divine.
Yet in his sober moments, when the sun Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall, And passion’s sea had grown an ebbing tide, From out the many, Memory singled one Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all— The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied.
p. 9HELEN OF TROY
ON THE ISLE OF CRANAE
The world an abject vassal to her charms, And kings competing for a single smile, Yet love she knew not, till upon this isle She gave surrender to abducting arms. Not Theseus, who plucked her lips’ first kiss, Not Menelaus, lawful mate and spouse, Such answering passion in her heart could rouse, Or wake such tumult in her soul as this. Let come what will, let Greece and Asia meet, Let heroes die and kingdoms run with gore; Let devastation spread from shore to shore— Resplendent Helen finds her bondage sweet. The whole world fights her battles, while she lies Sunned in the fervour of young Paris’ eyes.
p. 10ON THE ISLE OF RHODES
The battles ended, ardent Paris dead, Of faithful Menelaus long bereft, Time is the only suitor who is left: Helen survives, with youth and beauty fled. By hate remembered, but by love forgot, Dethroned and driven from her high estate, Unhappy Helen feels the lash of Fate And knows at last an unloved woman’s lot. The Grecian marvel, and the Trojan joy, The world’s fair wonder, from her palace flies The furies follow, and great Helen dies, A death of horror, for the pride of Troy.
* * * * *
Yet Time, like Menelaus, all forgives. Helen, immortal in her beauty, lives.
p. 11LAIS WHEN YOUNG
Lais when young, and all her charms in flower, Lais, whose beauty was the fateful light That led great ships to anchor in the night And bring their priceless cargoes to her bower, Lais yet found her cup of sweet turned sour. Great Plato’s pupil, from his lofty height, Zenocrates, unmoved, had seen the white Sweet wonder of her, and defied her power.
She snared the world in nets of subtle wiles: The proud, the famed, all clamoured at her gate; Dictators plead, inside her portico; Wisdom sought madness, in her favouring smiles; Now was she made the laughing-stock of fate: One loosed her clinging arms, and bade her go.
The sample stops here
This is as far as the free sample of Poems of Progress and New Thought Pastels goes
You have read 10 of 99 chapters. Start your trial to keep reading all 99 chapters, tap any word for an instant translation, hear the audio narration, and save your progress across devices.