1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
  39. A Southern Night
  40. Greenness
  41. Twilight
  42. On the Wing
  43. In Summer
  44. Before Parting
  45. Sonnet
  46. The Red Wheelbarrow
  47. Acceptance
  48. At The Pool
  49. Incurable
  50. Bluebird and Cardinal
  51. [Say What You Will, And Scratch My Heart To Find]
  52. The River
  53. Vas Doloris
  54. Squirrel
  55. Ghosts
Ghosts, abstract photo

There are ghosts in the room. 
As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there 
They come out of the gloom, 
And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair 

    There’s a ghost of a Hope
That lighted my days with a fanciful glow, 
In her hand is the rope
That strangled her life out. Hope was slain long ago. 

    But her ghost comes to-night 
With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes, 
And it stands in the light, 
And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs. 

    There’s the ghost of a Joy, 
A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much, 
And the hands that destroy
Clasped its close, and it died at the withering touch. 

    There’s the ghost of a Love,
Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain and unrest, 
But he towers above
All the others—this ghost; yet a ghost at the best, 

    I am weary, and fain
Would forget all these dead: but the gibbering host 
Make my struggle in vain—
In each shadowy corner there lurketh a ghost.
 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919) was an American poet and journalist.


To read more poems, click here.