Born on November 5th 1850 in Johnstown, Wisconsin, Ella Wheeler was the youngest of four children. She began to write as a child and by the time she graduated was already well known as a poet throughout Wisconsin. Regarded more as a popular poet than a literary poet her most famous work ‘Solitude’ reflects on a train journey she made where giving comfort to a distressed fellow traveller she wrote how the others grief imposed itself for a time on her ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep and you weep alone’. It was published in 1883 and was immensely popular. The following year, 1884, she married Robert Wilcox. They lived for a time in New York before moving to Connecticut. Their only child, a son, died shortly after birth. Here we publish one of her many poetry books, Custer & Other Poems, that so endeared her to her audience. Ella died of breast cancer on October 30th, 1919. Index Of Poems Two Sunsets Unrest "Artist's Life" Nothing but Stones The Coquette Inevitable The Ocean of Song "It Might Have Been" If Gethsemane Dust-Sealed "Advice" Over the Banisters Momus, God of Laughter I Dream The Past The Sonnet Secrets A Dream Uselessness Will Winter Rain Applause Life Burdened The Story Let Them Go The Engine Nothing New Dreams Helena Nothing Remains Lean Down Comrades What Gain? Life To the West The Land of Content A Song of Life Warning The Christian's New Year Prayer In the Night God's Measure A March Snow After the Battles are Over Noblesse Oblige And They Are Dumb Night All for Me Philosophy "Carlos" The Two Glasses Through Tears Into Space Through Dim Eyes La Mort d'Amour The Punished Half Fledged Love's Sleep True Culture The Voluptuary The Year The Unattained In the Crowd Life and I Guerdon Snowed Under Platonic What We Need "Leudemann's-on-the-River" In the Long Run Plea to Science Love's Burial Little Blue Hood No Spring Lippo Midsummer A Reminiscence Respite A Girl's Faith Two Slipping Away Is it Done? A Leaf Æsthetic Poems of the Week Ghosts Fleeing Away All Mad Hidden Gems By-and-By Over the May Hill A Song Foes Friendship Ella Wheeler Wilcox – A Short Biography Ella Wheeler Wilcox – A Concise Bibliography