Ella Wheeler Wilcox Poems

Oh hush, little baby, thy papa's at sea;
The big billows rock him as mamma rocks thee.
He hastes to his dear ones o'er billows of foam;
...

If it were in my dead Past’s power
To let my Present bask
In some lost pleasure for an hour,
This is the boon I’d ask:
...

I strolled last eve across the lonely down;
One solitary picture struck my eye:
A distant ploughboy stood against the sky—
...

Let me to-day do something that shall take
A little sadness from the world’s vast store,
And may I be so favoured as to make
Of joy’s too scanty sum a little more.
...

Dear love, if you and I could sail away,
With snowy pennons to the wind unfurled,
Across the waters of some unknown bay,
And find some island far from all the world;
...

Today I had a burial of my dead.
There was no shroud, no coffin, and no pall,
No prayers were uttered and no tears were shed
I only turned a picture to the wall.
...

She had looked for his coming as warriors come,
With the clash of arms and the bugle's call;
But he came instead with a stealthy tread,
Which she did not hear at all.
...

I gave a beggar from my little store
Of well-earned gold. He spent the shining ore
And came again, and yet again, still cold
And hungry, as before.
...

In the midnight of darkness and terror,
When I would grope nearer to God,
With my back to a record of error
And the highway of sin I have trod,
...

To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
Under the gaslight I saw a face-
A woman's face! and I swear to heaven
...