Wishing

Do you wish the world were better?
Let me tell you what to do.
Set a watch upon your actions,
Keep them always straight and true.
Rid your mind of selfish motives,
Let your thoughts be clean and high.
You can make a little Eden
Of the sphere you occupy.

Do you wish the world were wiser?
Well, suppose you make a start,
By accumulating wisdom
In the scrapbook of your heart;
Do not waste one page on folly;
Live to learn, and learn to live.
If you want to give men knowledge
You must get it, ere you give.

Do you wish the world were happy?
Then remember day by day
Just to scatter seeds of kindness
As you pass along the way,
For the pleasures of the many
May be ofttimes traced to one.
As the hand that plants an acorn
Shelters armies from the sun.

About Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919)

Ella Wilcox was born in Wisconsin and started writing at an early age. At the age of nine, she completed a novel of eleven chapters and at fifteen had her first poem published in the Waverley Magazine.

After getting her first cheque from her works, the floodgate of inspiration and ambition just opened up for Wilcox.

She married Robert Wilcox, a silver salesman and had a son who died a few hours after his birth. After 30 years of their marriage, her husband died of pneumonia and she was believed to be overcome by grief. When her life turned upside down, she spent her time to spiritualism and was interested in theosophy.

After his death, she went to France to comfort the American soldiers believing that it was what her deceased husband would want her to do. While engaging in her war relief effort she had a nervous collapse and was believed to suffer from cancer.

Ella Wilcox poems always express optimism. Her works are full of words of hope, love, faith and compassion. The book by which she was best known is the Poems of Passion.