Famous for her line, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you”, from her poem “Solitude”, published in 1883, Ella Wheeler Wilcox was a journalist besides being a poetess. Her poems primarily were about passion and some even had eroticism. At her time, during the 1860s and 70s , she was even compared to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. However, after her marriage in 1884, her poems showed a transformation of her persona. Her writings showed morality in thought, spiritualism and theosophy. The following statement by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “As we think, act, and live here today, we built the structures of our homes in spirit realms after we leave earth” marks her transformation.
The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Through this poem, Wilcox puts emphasis on contrasts in life. She places opposing elements of life together, such as laughing and weeping and hoping and dying. It is with these good and bad parts of life in mind that she presents a fuller, more realistic picture of the “new year.” The new year shows a beginning to change into something good.
The poem begins with the speaker wondering what is left in the world that can be new. Even though it is a new year, that does not mean anything has changed. There is a sense of desolation and lost cause. In the next five couplets, the speaker admits there is nothing changes at all. She testifies this by the realisation of the presence of dreams and the way they lead one through life, ideally, to knowledge. She also presents laughter and weeping as opposite, but equally present parts of life. Where there is sorrow, eventually joy comes soon and vice versa.
The poem concludes by a blanket statement that life is a mixed bag and even the joys are a “burden of life.”
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