This little volume might be called ‘Echoes from the land of youthful imaginings’; or ‘Ghosts of old dreams.’ It has been compiled at the request of Messrs. Gay and Hancock (my only authorised publishers in Great Britain), and contains verses written in my early youth, and which never before (with the exception, perhaps, of three or four) have been placed in book form.
Given the poetical temperament, and a lonely environment, with few distractions, youthful imagination is sure to express itself in mournful wails and despairing moans. Such wails and moans will be found to excess in this little book, and will serve to show better than any amount of common-sense reasoning, how fleeting are the sorrows of youth, and how slight the foundation on which the young build towers of despair.
In the days when these verses were written, each little song represented a few dollars (to my emaciated purse), and so the slightest experience of my own, or of any friend, with every passing mood, every trivial happening, was utilised by my imaginative and thrifty muse.
That the writer has always possessed robust health, and has lived to a good age, is proof positive that the verses are not all expressions of personal experiences, since no human being could have borne such continual agonies and retained life and reason.
All the verses in the book were written while I bore the name of Ella Wheeler, and are quite inconsistent with the ideas and philosophy of
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
August 1910.
How young I am! Ah! heaven, this curse of youth
Doth mock me from my mirror with great eyes,
And pulsing veins repeat the unwelcome truth,
That I must live, though hope within me dies.
So young, and yet I have had all of life.
Why, men have lived to see a hundred years,
Who have not known the rapture, joy, and strife
Of my brief youth, its passion and its tears.
Oh! what are years? A ripe three score and ten
Hold often less of life, in its best sense,
Than just a twelvemonth lived by other men,
Whose high-strung souls are ardent and intense.
But having seen all depths and scaled all heights,
Having a heart love thrilled, and sorrow wrung,
Knowing all pains, all pleasures, all delights,
Now I would die—but cannot, being young.
Nothing is left me, but supreme despair;
The bitter dregs that tell of wasted wine.
Come furrowed brow, dull eye, and frosted hair,
Companions fit for this old heart of mine.
Through the sunshine, and through the rain
Of these changing days of mist and splendour,
I see the face of a year-old pain
Looking at me with a smile half tender.
With a smile half tender, and yet all sad,
Into each hour of the mild September
It comes, and finding my life grown glad
Looks down in my eyes, and says ‘Remember.’
Says ‘Remember,’ and points behind
To days of sorrow, and tear-wet lashes;
When joy lay dead and hope was blind,
And nothing was left but dust and ashes.
Dust and ashes and vain regret,
Flames fanned out, and the embers falling.
But the sun of the saddest day must set,
And hope wakes ever with Springtime’s calling.
With Springtime’s calling the pulses thrill;
And the heart is tuned to a sweeter measure.
For never a green Spring crossed the hill
That came not laden with some new pleasure.
Some new pleasure that brings content;
And the heart looks up with a smile of gladness,
And wonders idly when sorrow went
Out of the life that seemed all sadness.
That seemed all sadness, and yet grew bright
With colours we thought could tinge it never.
Yet I think the pain though out of sight,
Like the warp of the carpet, is there for ever.
There for ever, and by and by
When the woof wears thin, or draws asunder,
We see the sombre threads that lie
Intertwining and twisting under.
Twisting under and binding so
The brighter threads that they may not sever.
Thus the pain of a year ago
Must stay a part of my life for ever.
The dawn grows red in the eastern sky,
(Long, so long is the day,)
And I lean from my lattice and sigh and sigh,
As I watch the night fog creeping by
And vanish over the bay.
The thrush soars up, over green clad hills,
(The day is long, so long;)
Like liquid silver his music spills,
And ever it quivers, and runs, and trills
In a glad sweet burst of song.
Under my window there blooms a rose,
(How long a day can be.)
And I lean and whisper what no soul knows
Of my heart’s sorrows and secret woes,
And the red rose sighs, ‘Ah me!’
A ship sails into the waiting bay,
(The day is long, alack,)
But what would that matter to me, I pray
If the ship that sailed out yesterday
Should never more come back.
The summer sun rides high and clear,
(The day is long, so long,)
How long it must be ere it grows to a year—
How deep the sorrow that finds no tear,
But only a wail of song.
If I could only weep,
I think sweet help with my salt tears would come,
To ease the cruel pain that is so dumb,
And will not let me sleep.
Down in my heart, down deep
A poisoned arrow burns. It would fall out
And tears would wash the wound, I have no doubt,
If I could only weep.
Maybe my pulse would leap,
And bring one thrill back, of a vanished day,
Instead of throbbing in this dull, dead way,
If I could only weep.
O silent Fates who steep
Nectar or gall for us through all the years,
Take what thou wilt, but give me back my tears,
And let me weep and weep.
Why should we sigh o’er a summer that’s dead—
Let us think of the summer to be.
It always better to look ahead,
For the rose will come again just as red
And just as fair to see.
Why should we weep o’er a pleasure past—
Let us look for the pleasure to be.
New shells on the shore by new waves are cast;
Let us prize each new joy more than the last,
And laugh if the old joy flee.
What folly to die for a love that was—
Let us live for the one to be.
For time is passing, and will not pause;
How foolish the shore were it sad because
One wave ebbed out to sea.
Then let us not sing of a year that is fled—
Though dear its memory be:
For though summer and pleasure and love seem dead,
Love will be sweet, and the rose will be red
When they blossom for you and me.
In the dark and the gloom when winds were fretting
Like restless children worn out with play,
I said to my heart, ‘This task, forgetting—
Is harder now than it is by day.
For a hungry love that hides from the light,
Like a tiger steals forth, and is bold at night.’
The wind wailed low like a woman weeping;
Deeper and darker the dense gloom grew.
And, oh! for the old, sweet nights of sleeping,
When dreams were happy, and love was true.
Before the stars from heaven went out
In a sudden blackness of dread and doubt.
The wind wailed loud, like a madman shrieking,
And I said to my heart, ‘Oh! vain, vain strife;
We cannot forget, and the peace we are seeking
Can only be won at the end of life.
For see! like a lurid and living spark
The eyes of the tiger shine through the dark.’
The wind sighed low like a sick man dying,
And the dawn crept silently over the hill.
And I said, ‘O heart! there is no use trying,
We must remember, and love on still.’
And the tiger, appeased with its midnight feast,
Fled as the dawn rose red in the East.
Once more on the beach with the shifting clouds o’er me
(Like the friends of a day),
And the sea all unchanged, like a true friend before me,
How the years flow away,
How the summers go by.
The shifting clouds o’er me, the shifting sands under;
Why need it seem strange,
Why need I feel bitter, and why should I wonder
That hearts, too, should change
As the summers go by.
Down here is the path where we wandered together,
’Neath the midsummer moon.
Her love was sweet as the sweet summer weather,
And left us as soon,
And the summers go by.
The bathers laugh loud in the surf over yonder.
If one should dive deep,
And rise not—no more need he suffer or ponder
O’er losses, or weep,
But sink low and sleep
While the summers go by.
As I sat in my opera box last night
In a glimmer of gems and a blaze of light,
And smiling that all might see,
This curious thought came all unsought—
That there were two of me.
One who sat in her silk and lace,
With gems on her bosom and smiles on her face,
And hot-house blossoms in her hair,
While her fan kept time to the swaying rhyme
Of the lilting opera air.
And one who sat in the dark somewhere,
With her wan face hid by her falling hair,
And her hands clasped over her eyes;
And the sickening pain of heart and brain
Breathed out in long-drawn sighs.
One in the sheen of her opera suit;
And one who was swathed from head to foot,
In crêpe of the blackest dye.
One hiding her heart and playing a part,
And one with her mask thrown by.
But over the voice of the singer there,
The one who sat with a rose in her hair,
Seemed ever to hear the moan
Of the one who kept in the dark and wept
With her desolate heart alone.
O mad with mirth are the birds to-day
That over my head are winging.
There is nothing but glee in the roundelay
That I hear them singing, singing.
On wings of light, up, out of sight—