The Buckley School's founder believed all public speakers should hone their presentation skills by reading poetry out loud. We keep that worthwhile practice alive by including a poem in our magazine each month for you to read aloud.
Wisconsin born Ellen Wheeler began writing poetry at the age of eight and had her first poem published at 13.
Perhaps her best-known lines come from the poem "Solitude," which was first published in early 1883. Traveling by train to the governor’s inaugural ball in Madison, Wisconsin, 23-year-old Wheeler had noticed another young woman, dressed in black, sobbing. The young woman’s husband had just died. Wheeler tried to comfort her.
Hours later, when Wheeler looked at her own face in the mirror as she prepared for the ball, the opening lines came to her:
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.
She sent the poem to a magazine and was paid $5 on its publication.
The next year, she married Robert Wilcox and moved to New York City, forming a circle of literary friends. With her husband, Ellen Wheeler Wilcox made a pact: Whoever died first would communicate from the surviving spouse from the afterlife.
Robert Wilcox died in 1916, and Ellen Wheeler Wilcox fell into a deep depression as she waited for her husband's spirit to contact her. She used positive mantras to deal with her grief. She died in 1919 from cancer.
For you to read aloud, we provide this Ellen Wheeler Wilcox poem:
A Girl's Autumn Reverie
We plucked a red rose, you and I,
All in the summer weather;
Sweet its perfume and rare its bloom,
Enjoyed by us together.
The rose is dead, the summer fled,
And bleak winds are complaining;
We dwell apart, but in each heart
We find the thorn remaining.
We sipped a sweet wine, you and I,
All in the summer weather.
The beaded draught we lightly quaffed,
And filled the glass together.
Together we watched its rosy glow,
And saw its bubbles glitter;
Apart, alone we only know
The lees are very bitter.
We walked in sunshine, you and I,
All in the summer weather:
The very night seemed noonday bright,
When we two were together.
I wonder why with our good-bye
O'er hill and vale and meadow
There fell such shade, our paths seemed laid
For evermore in shadow.
We dreamed a sweet dream, you and I,
All in the summer weather,
Where rose and wine and warm sunshine
Were mingled in together.
We dreamed that June was with us yet,
We woke to find December.
We dreamed that we two could forget,
We woke but to remember.
