How Like the Sea

1850 –

1919

How like the sea, the myriad-minded sea,
Is this large love of ours: so vast, so deep,
So full of myseries! it, too, can keep
Its secrets, like the ocean; and is free,
Free, as the boundless main. Now it may be
Calm like the brow of some sweet child asleep;
Again its seething billows surge and leap
And break in fulness of their ecstasy.

Each wave so like the wave which came before,
Yet never two the same! Imperative
And then persuasive as the cooing dove,
Encroaching ever on the yielding shore—
Ready to take; yet readier still to give—
How like the myriad-minded sea, is love.

This poem is in the public domain.

The Things That Count

Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,
Great deeds of valour and might,
That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.
But it is the doing of old things,
Small acts that are just and right;
And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;
In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when you want to play—
Dear, those are the things that count.

And, dear, it isn’t the new ways
Where the wonder-seekers crowd
That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1919

The Word

Oh, a word is a gem, or a stone, or a song,

Or a flame, or a two-edged sword;

Or a rose in bloom, or a sweet perfume,

Or a drop of gall is a word.

You may choose your word like a connoisseur,

And polish it up with art,

But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,

Is the word that comes from the heart.

You may work on your word a thousand weeks,

But it will not glow like one

That all unsought, leaps forth white hot,

When the fountains of

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1906

Poems

How Like the Sea

More by this poet

Thanksgiving

The Things That Count

The Word

Poems

Page submenu block

How Like the Sea

More by this poet

Thanksgiving

The Things That Count

The Word

Newsletter Sign Up