Solitude

I always love it when I find the source of a common saying. I have heard the first lines of this poem repeatedly throughout my life--live long enough and you will too! Here it is folks, first coined by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in her poem as follows:


LAUGH, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sorrow

SORROW like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, --
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.
People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Rest

Rest.

WE are so tired, my heart and I.
Of all things here beneath the sky
One only thing would please us best--
Endless, unfathomable rest.

We are so tired; we ask no more
Than just to slip out by Life's door;
And leave behind the noisy rout
And everlasting turn about.

Once it seemed well to run on too
With her importunate, fevered crew,
And snatch amid the frantic strife
Some morsel from the board of life.

But we are tired.
At Life's crude hands
We ask no gift she understands;
But kneel to him she hates to crave
The absolution of the grave.

Mathilde Blind

Into my Dreams

I TOOK your face into my dreams,

It floated round me like a light;

Your beauty's consecrating beams

Lay mirrored in my heart all night.

As in a lonely mountain mere,

Unvisited of any streams,

Supremely bright and still and clear,

The solitary moonlight gleams,

Your face was shining in my dreams.

Mathilde Blind

Gray Fog

Gray Fog
A fog drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea --
One by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window
With the whole world gone blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,
There is nothing left to be done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead.

Sara Teasdale

Summer Night, Riverside

Summer Night, Riverside

IN the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled my hair. . . .
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
When she goes home,
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year's blossoms, clinging in its coils ?

Spray

Spray

I knew you thought of me all night,

I knew, though you were far away;

I felt your love blow over me

As if a dark wind-riven sea

Drenched me with quivering spray.

There are so many ways to love

And each way has its own delight --

Then be content to come to me

Only as spray the beating sea

Drives inland through the night.




Sara Teasdale

Our Souls have Touched

OUR souls have touched each other,
Two fountains from one jet;
Like children of one mother
Our leaping thoughts have met.
We were as far asunder
As green isles in the sea;
And now we ask in wonder
How that could ever be.
I dare not call thee lover
Nor any earthly name,
Though love's full cup flows over
As water quick with flame.
When two strong minds have mated
As only spirits may,
The world shines new created
In a diviner day.
Yea, though hard fate may sever
My fleeting self from thine,
Thy thought will live for ever
And ever grow in mine.

Mathilde Blind