More than a hundred years ago, the popular American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox published poetry filled with simple eloquence and uncommon wisdom. She was born in 1850 near the American frontier, far from the intellectual establishment of the day. But she had a knack for expressing memorably the truth and beauty she saw in life.
A commentator notes that the first poems she submitted for publication were rejected, “and with that proverbial insight and inspiration which editors and publishers fancy they possess, she was calmly advised to give up her idea of becoming a poet.”1 Fortunately, Ella disagreed, and now her published poems number in the hundreds. One of them, titled “Worth While,” expresses the strength of character she showed when she refused to “give up her idea of becoming a poet”:
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.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth,
Is the smile that shines through tears.
It is easy enough to be prudent,
When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
Is luring your soul away;
But it’s only a negative virtue
Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honor on earth,
Is the one that resists desire.
By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
Who had no strength for the strife,
The world’s highway is cumbered to-day,
They make up the sum of life.
But the virtue that conquers passion,
And the sorrow that hides in a smile,
It is these that are worth the homage on earth
For we find them but once in a while. 2
Program #4077
1. Laura C. Holloway, The Women’s Story: As Told by Twenty American Women (1889), 511.
2. An Erring Woman’s Love (1892), 29–30.