On February 25, 1883, 140 years ago, The New York Sun published a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919). She called it “The Way of the World,” but we at the Sun retitled it “Solitude,” sent her $5, and printed it in our regular poetry feature of the time, which had the charming column name, “Poems of the Period.” Keeping our title, Wilcox included it in her first book, “Poems of Passion,” published that same year, for which she was said to have received $2,000.

This past spring, we offered as Poem of the Day Wilcox’s “March,” competent and whimsical pentameter verse that imagines the month of March as a strident woman demanding change: She “wearies all who hear, / While yet we know the need of such reform.” And, turning her reformer into John the Baptist, she observes that “merry April and sweet smiling May / Come not till March has first prepared the way.” Wilcox was not uniformly awful, in other words. She had some genuine talent, and though she pandered to her 19th-century audience, she could write better verse when she tried.

It would be easy to say that “Solitude,” her most popular poem — perhaps the only poem for which she’s known anymore — is not an example of her better verse. It’s over-simple in its tetrameter rhymes and over-easy in its idea. And yet, the poem did express something that all of us have thought at one time or another. And with “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; / Weep, and you weep alone,” the poem gave us that thought in the most compact and memorable form it has ever had. So why shouldn’t the poem be remembered? “There are none to decline your nectared wine, / But alone you must drink life’s gall.”

Solitude
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.