The Kingdom of Love

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was a 19th century writer who's now best known for her poetry, particularly Poems of Passion and the poem "Solitude."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Krill Press
• Release date: Jan 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781518389573

Book preview

world.

THE KINGDOM OF LOVE AND OTHER POEMS

..................

by

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

GAY AND HANCOCK, LTD.

12 & 13, HENRIETTA STREET, STRAND

LONDON

1909

[All rights reserved]

Contents:

The Kingdom Of Love

Meg’s Curse

Solitude

The Gossips

Platonic

Grandpa’s Christmas

After The Engagement

A Holiday

False

Two Sinners

The Phantom Ball

Words And Thoughts

Wanted—A Little Girl

The Suicide

Now I Lay Me

The Messenger

A Servian Legend

Peek-A-Boo

The Falling Of Thrones

Her Last Letter

The Princess’s Finger-Nail

A Baby In The House

The Foolish Elm

Robin’s Mistake

New Year Resolve

What We Want

Breaking The Day In Two

The Rape Of The Mist

The Two Glasses

The Maniac

What Is Flirtation?

Husband And Wife

How Does Love Speak?

Reincarnation

As You Go Through Life

How Salvator Won

The Watcher

How Will It Be?

Memory’s River

Love’s Way

A Man’s Last Love

The Lady And The Dame

Confession

A Married Coquette

Forbidden Speech

The Summer Girl

The Ghost

The Signboard

A Man’s Repentance

Aristarchus

Dell And I

About May

Vanity Fair

The Giddy Girl

A Girl’s Autumn Reverie

His Youth

Under The Sheet

A Pin

The Coming Man

In the dawn of the day when the sea and the earth

I set forth with a heart full of courage and mirth

I asked of a Poet I met on the way

And he said "Follow me, and ere long you shall see

And soon in the distance a city shone fair.

But alas! for the hopes that were doomed to despair,

Then the next man I asked was a gay Cavalier,

And with laughter and song we went speeding along

Then we came to a valley more tropical far

And I saw from a bower a face like a flower

And he said: "We have come to humanity’s goal:

But alas and alas! for the hopes of my soul—

As I journeyed more slowly I met on the road

And they said: "Follow me, for our Lady’s abode

’Twas a grand dame of fashion, a newly-made bride,

But my hopes died away like the last gleams of day,

At the door of a cottage I asked a fair maid.

"But my feet never roam from the ‘Kingdom of Home,’

I looked on the cottage; how restful it seemed!

Great light glorified my soul as I cried:

MEG’S CURSE

..................

The sun rode high in a cloudless sky

She stood and gazed out into the street,

On the topmost branch of a maple-tree

A robin called to his mate enthralled:

A soft look came in her hardened face—

But the robin’s trill, as some sounds will,

She thought of the old home far away;

She heard the turtle’s wild, sweet call,

She saw again that dusty road

She smelled once more the flower she wore

Out on the new-mown meadow she heard

And the warning cry of a Phoebe bird

With a blithe Hello to the men below

The rider drew rein at her window-pane—

How young she was, and how fair she was;

The future seemed fair, for Love was there—

In a dingy glass on the wall near by

"Well, Meg, I declare, what a beauty you are!

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

She reached out her arms with a moaning sob:

Then, swift and strange, came a sudden change;

"A curse on the day and a curse on that man,

"May he starve and be cold, may he live to be old

Her wild voice frightened the robin away

And little he knew as away he flew,

He called to his mate on the grass below,

And as mates have done since the world begun

The dingy room seemed curtained with gloom;

The ghost of her youth and her murdered truth

She hurried out into the noisy street,

To flee from thought was all she sought,

Still on she pressed in her wild unrest

Where fashion’s throng moved gayly along

A clatter of hoofs down the stony street,

That was running wild, and a laughing child

With one swift glance