The Year
by Ella Wheeler WilcoxWhat can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919) was an American author and poet. She grew up in a poor farm family in Wisconsin as the youngest of four children. Because of her mother’s encouragement and love of literature, she developed a strong love of reading and writing.
“Ella Wheeler Wilcox is one of America’s great writers. Her prolific prose and poetry are a tour de force of optimism, of the triumph of hope over despair, of victory over failure, of good over evil, of kindness over selfishness. She gave no quarter to negativity. The harshness of life was but an opportunity to change lead into gold. She was a transcendental alchemist…. [Her] strength is her simplicity. She had the knack of getting to the heart of the most complex of everyday human problems. Then, she’d come up with the most simply worded and highly potent answers.”
~ Dr. John Paolo, Little Sayings of the Great Ella Wheeler Wilcox