Poem: “A Woman’s Love” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Poems of Sentiment

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American Literature – American Poetry – Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Poems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Poems of Sentiment
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A Woman’s Love

So vast the tide of love within me surging,
   It overflows like some stupendous sea,
   The confines of the Present and To-be;
And ’gainst the Past’s high wall I feel it urging,
   As it would cry, “Thou, too, shalt yield to me!”

All other loves my supreme love embodies;
   I would be she on whose soft bosom nursed
   Thy clinging infant lips to quench their thirst;
She who trod close to hidden worlds where God is,
   That she might have, and hold, and see thee first.

I would be she who stirred the vague, fond fancies
   Of thy still childish heart; who through bright days
   Went sporting with thee in the old-time plays,
And caught the sunlight of thy boyish glances
   In half-forgotten and long-buried Mays.

Forth to the end, and back to the beginning,
   My love would send its inundating tide,
   Wherein all landmarks of thy past should hide.
If thy life’s lesson must be learned through sinning,
   My grieving virtue would become thy guide.

For I would share the burden of thy errors,
   So when the sun of our brief life had set,
   If thou didst walk in darkness and regret,
E’en in that shadowy world of nameless terrors,
   My soul and thine should be companions yet.

And I would cross with thee those troubled oceans
   Of dark remorse whose waters are despair:
   All things my jealous, reckless love would dare,
So that thou mightst not recollect emotions
   In which it did not have a part and share.

There is no limit to my love’s full measure,
   It’s spirit-gold is shaped by earth’s alloy;
   I would be friend and mother, mate and toy,
I’d have thee look to me for every pleasure,
   And in me find all memories of joy.

Yet though I love thee in such selfish fashion,
   I would wait on thee, sitting at thy feet,
   And serving thee, if thou didst deem it meet.
And couldst thou give me one fond hour of passion,
   I’d take that hour and call my life complete.

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American Literature – American Poetry – Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Poems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Poems of Sentiment

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Poems of Sentiment

A Woman’s Love

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