ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Ghosts"

     There are ghosts in the room.

As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there

They come out of the gloom,

And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair

     There’s a ghost of a Hope

That lighted my days with a fanciful glow,

In her hand is the rope

That strangled her life out. Hope was slain long ago.

     But her ghost comes to-night

With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes,

And it stands in the light,

And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.

     There’s the ghost of a Joy,

A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,

And the hands that destroy

Clasped its close, and it died at the withering touch.

     There’s the ghost of a Love,

Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain and unrest,

But he towers above

All the others—this ghost; yet a ghost at the best,

     I am weary, and fain

Would forget all these dead: but the gibbering host

Make my struggle in vain—

In each shadowy corner there lurketh a ghost.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Worth While"

It is easy enough to be pleasant

     When life flows by like a song,

But the man worth while is the one who will smile

     When everything goes dead wrong.

For the test of the heart is trouble,

     And it always comes with the years,

And the smile that is worth the praises of earth

     Is the smile that shines through tears.

It is easy enough to be prudent

     When nothing tempts you to stray,

When without or within no voice of sin

     Is luring your soul away;

But it's only a negative virtue

     Until it is tried by fire,

And the life that is worth the honour on earth

     Is the one that resists desire.

By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,

     Who had no strength for the strife,

The world's highway is cumbered to-day -

     They make up the sum of life;

But the virtue that conquers passion,

     And the sorrow that hides in a smile -

It is these that are worth the homage on earth,

    For we find them but once in a while.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
“My Grave”

____________________

If, when I die, I must be buried, let
No cemetery engulf me – no lone grot,
Where the great palpitating world comes not,
Save when, with heart bowed down and eyelids wet,
It pays its last sad melancholy debt
To some outjourneying pilgrim. May my lot
Be rather to lie in some much-used spot,
Where human life, with all its noise and fret,
Throbs about me. Let the roll of wheels,
With all earth’s sounds of pleasure, commerce, love,
And rush of hurrying feet surge o’er my head.
Even in my grave I shall be one who feels
Close kinship with the pulsing world above;
And too deep silence would distress me, dead.