POETRY SPOT

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919) was an American author and poet. Wilcox was an advocate of animal rights and vegetarianism, and died of cancer. Her poem "Solitude" originated the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.

Society in the latter half of the 19th century held the rigid expectation that women limit their activities and aspirations to housework and raising a family. These expectations were present for, yet irrelevant to poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

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The Man Worth While

It is easy enough to be pleasant,

When life flows by like a song,

But the man worth while is 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 honor of 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.