The Healing Journey

April 8, 2024

“Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone.”
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was one of the most popular poets of the early 19th century. Born on a farm in Wisconsin, she wrote her first poem at 8 and had her first poem published at 13. Her most famous is titled, “Solitude” and was inspired during a train ride to Madison, where she was going to attend the inaugural ball of the governor. She sat across the aisle from a young woman who was dressed in black and sobbing. Wheeler moved closer to offer comfort for the rest of the ride and learned that her husband had died. The compassionate sorrow that Wheeler felt almost caused her to skip the event. When she looked in the mirror, she recalled the despondent widow, and the famous opening line of the verse came to her. The poem was published in the New York Sun in 1883, and she was paid $5. Several months later, it was included in her collection “Poems of Passion.” In later years, Wilcox and her family lived in Branford, Conn. on the shore of Long Island Sound, where she died at Short Beach on October 30, 1919.

Solitude

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its 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 large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

***