Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Alone in the House

I am all alone in the house to-night;
   They would not have gone away
Had they known of the terrible, bloodless fight
   I have held with my heart to-day.
With the old sweet love and the old fierce pain
   I have battled hour by hour;
But the fates have willed that the strife is vain.
Alone in the hour my thoughts have reign,
   And I yield myself to their power.

Yield myself to the old time charm
   Of a dream of vanished bliss,
The thrill of a voice, and the fold of an arm,
   And a red lip’s lingering kiss.
It all comes back like a flowing tide;
   That brief, but beautiful day.
Though it oft is checked by the dam of pride,
Till the waters flow back to the other side,
   To-night it has broken away.

I gave you all that I had to give,
   O love, the lavish whole.
And you threw it away, and now I live
   A starved and beggared soul.
And I feed on crumbs that memory throws
   From her table over-filled,
And I lay awake when others repose,
And slake my thirst when no one knows,
   With the wine that she has spilled.

I go my way and I do my part
   In the world’s great scene of strife,
But I do it all with an empty heart,
   Dead to the best of life.
And ofttimes weary and tempest tossed,
   When I am not ruled by pride,
I wish ere the die was throne and lost,
Ere I played for love without counting the cost,
   That I, like my heart, had died.

1. At Eleusis
2. Affirm
3. Intermediary
4. The Chosen
5. Queries

Print

1250 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version