Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850–October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion, and her autobiography, The Worlds and I was published in 1918 shortly before her death.

1 Life
2 Poetry
3 Autobiography
4 Works
5 External links

[edit] Life

Ella Wheeler was born in 1850 on a farm in rural Johnstown, Wisconsin, east of Janesville, the youngest of four children. The family soon moved to north of Madison. She started writing poetry at a very early age, and was well known as a poet in her own state by the time she graduated from high school. When about 28 years of age, she married Robert Wilcox. They had one child, a son, who died shortly after birth. Not long after their marriage, they both became interested in Theosophy.

Early in their married life, they promised each other that whoever went first through death would return and communicate with the other. Robert Wilcox died in 1916, after over thirty years of marriage. She was overcome with grief, which became ever more intense as week after week went without any message from him. It was at this time that she went to California to see Max Heindel, still seeking help in her sorrow, still unable to understand why she had had no word from her Robert. This is how she tells of this meeting:

"In talking with Max Heindel, the leader of the Rosicrucian Philosophy in California, he made very clear to me the effect of intense grief. Mr. Heindel assured me that I would come in touch with the spirit of my husband when I learned to control my sorrow. I replied that it seemed strange to me that an omnipotent God could not send a flash of his light into a suffering soul to bring its conviction when most needed. Did you ever stand beside a clear pool of water, asked Mr. Heindel, and see the trees and skies repeated therein? And did you ever cast a stone into that pool and see it clouded and turmoiled, so it gave no reflection? Yet the skies and trees were waiting above to be reflected when the waters grew calm. So God and your husband's spirit wait to show themselves to you when the turbulence of sorrow is quieted".

Several months later, she composed a little mantra which she said over and over "I am the living witness: The dead live: And they speak through us and to us: And I am the voice that gives this glorious truth to the suffering world: I am ready, God: I am ready, Christ: I am ready, Robert."; she made efforts to teach occult things to the world, during World War I period, but was received in most part with scorn and disbelief: "As we think, act, and live here today, we built the structures of our homes in spirit realms after we leave earth, and we build karma for future lives, thousands of years to come, on this earth or other planets. Life will assume new dignity, and labor new interest for us, when we come to the knowledge that death is but a continuation of life and labor, in higher planes".

[edit] Poetry

A popular rather than a literary poet, her poems express sentiments of cheer and optimism in plainly written, rhyming verse. Her world view is expressed in the title of her poem "Whatever Is—Is Best" (suggesting an echo of Pope's "Whatever is, is right."). None of her work was included by F. O. Matthiessen in The Oxford Book of American Verse, but Hazel Felleman chose no less than thirteen of her poems for Best Loved Poems of the American People, while Martin Gardner selected "Solitude" and "The Winds of Fate" for Best Remembered Poems.

She is frequently cited in parody collections (Pegasus Descending, others). Sinclair Lewis indicates Babbitt's lack of literary sophistication by having him refer to a piece of verse as "one of the classic poems, like 'If' by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's 'The Man Worth While.'" The latter opens:

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.

Her most famous lines open her poem "Solitude":

Laugh and the world laughs with you,

Weep, and you weep alone;

For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

"The Winds of Fate" is a marvel of economy, far too short to summarize. In full:

One ship drives east, and another west

With the self-same winds that blow;

'Tis the set of the sails

And not the gales

That decides the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,

As they voyage along through life;

'Tis the will of the soul

That decides its goal,

And not the calm or the strife.

[edit] Autobiography

Her final words in her autobiography The Worlds and I:

"From this mighty storehouse (of God, and the hierarchies of Spiritual Beings ) we may gather wisdom and knowledge, and receive light and power, as we pass through this preparatory room of earth, which is only one of the innumerable mansions in our Father's house. Think on these things".

[edit] Works

Book (Autobiography)
- The Worlds and I, New York: George II Doran Company, c1918 www

Poetry
- The Invisible Helpers in Cosmopolitan 57 (October 1914): 578-579 www
- The Voice of the Voiceless www
- Disarmament www
- Roads to God www
- To An Astrologer www
- Secret Thoughts www
- An Ambitious Man www
- An Englishman and Other Poems www
- Hello, Boys! www
- The Kingdom of Love www
- Maurine and other Poems www
- New Thought Pastels www
- Poems of Cheer www
- Poems of Experience www
- Poems of Optimism www
- Poems of Passion www
- Poems of Power www
- Poems of Progress www
- Poems of Purpose www
- Poems of Sentiment www
- A Woman of the World www
- Yesterday www