Ella Wheeler Wilcox Poems

I know it is early morning,
And hope is calling aloud,
And your heart is afire with Youth’s desire
To hurry along with the crowd.
...

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—
...

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.
...

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;
...

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.
...

One moment alone in the garden,
Under the August skies;
The moon had gone but the stars shone on, -
Shone like your beautiful eyes.
...

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,
...

I knew it the first of the summer,
I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
But couldn’t you be my friend?
...