Ella Wheeler Wilcox on smoking, love, and autumn

Smoke

• Last summer, lazing by the sea,
•     I met a most entrancing creature,
• Her black eyes quite bewildered me —
•     She had a Spanish cast of feature.

• She often smoked a cigarette,
•     And did it in the cutest fashion.
• Before a week passed by she set
•     My young heart in a raging passion.

• I swore I loved her as my life,
•     I gave her gems (don’t tell my tailor).
• She promised to become my wife,
•     But whispered, ‘Papa is my jailer.’

• ‘We must be very sly, you see,
•     For Papa will not list to reason.
• You must not come to call on me
•     Until he’s gone from home a season.

• ‘I’ll send you word, now don’t forget,
•     Take this as pledge, I will remember.’
• She gave me a perfumed cigarette,
•     And turned and left me with September.

• To-day she sent her ‘cards’ to me.
•     ‘My presence asked’ to see her marry
• That millionaire old banker C —
•     She has my ‘presents,’ so I’ll tarry.

• And still I feel a keen regret
•     (About the jewels that I gave her)
• I’ve smoked the little cigarette —
•     It had a most delicious flavor.

Last Love

• The first flower of the spring is not so fair
• Or bright, as one the ripe midsummer brings.
• The first faint note the forest warbler sings
• Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare
• As when, full master of his art, the air
• Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings
• Like silver spray from beak, and breast, and wings.
• The artist’s earliest effort wrought with care,
• The bard’s first ballad, written in his tears,
• Set by his later toil seems poor and tame.
• And into nothing dwindles at the test.
• So with the passions of maturer years
• Let those who will demand the first fond flame,
• Give me the heart’s last love, for that is best.

An Autumn Day

• Leaden skies and a lonesome shadow
•     Where summer has passed with her gorgeous train;
• Snow on the mountain, and frost on the meadow--
•     A white face pressed to the window pane;
• A cold mist falling, a bleak wind a calling,
•     And oh! but life seems vain.

• Rain is better than golden weather,
•     When the heart is dulled with a dumb despair.
• Dead leaves lie where they walked together,
•     The hammock is gone, and the rustic chair.
• Let bleak snows cover the whole world over —
•     It will never again seem fair.

• Time laughs lightly at youth’s sad ‘Never,’
•     Summer shall come again, smiling once more,
• High o’er the cold world the sun shines forever,
•     Hearts that seemed dead are alive at the core.
• Oh, but the pain of it — oh, but the gain of it,
•     After the shadows pass o’er.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) was an American poet best known for her poem “Solitude,” which opens with the lines “Laugh, and the world laughs with you/Weep, and you weep alone.” Considered a popular poet, she has also often been cited for her “bad” poetry; however, the cheer and optimism present in her poems drew, at least during her lifetime, a cadre of followers that served as a counterbalance to her critical reception among scholars. Born in Wisconsin, Wilcox also spent a good deal of time studying theosophy and spiritualism in California.