A Tribute by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Name: A Tribute
Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"A Tribute" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a consolatory poem addressed to a grieving mother who has lost an infant, written from the perspective of a compassionate observer who, though personally unacquainted with deep sorrow, is moved to offer comfort through her empathy and spiritual reflection. The poem opens with the speaker acknowledging that her own heart, ordinarily content and grateful, has been shadowed on this particular afternoon by awareness of another woman's suffering. Though Sorrow and Grief have barely touched the speaker herself, she recognizes through this witnessed pain a glimpse of what human loss can truly mean. Wilcox identifies the death of an infant as the most devastating of all earthly griefs — a sorrow that tears the soul apart. She renders concrete the particular anguish of a mother who has endured the physical and emotional labor of nurturing a child: the fears of pregnancy and birth, the sleepless nights, the tender lullabies sung in darkness — all of it accumulated love that ends in the child's death. The loss is rendered doubly cruel by the investment of suffering that preceded it. The bereaved woman the speaker addresses has suffered what the poem calls "a double loss" — both the child and the light the child brought into her life. Her arms ache with emptiness. The speaker, though a stranger to this mother, weeps genuine tears on her behalf. The poem then turns toward consolation rooted in a Victorian Romantic spirituality of nature. Wilcox suggests that God places the souls of lost infants — pure and white — back into the natural world, returning them to the living as flowers and light. The golden sunlight and blooming flowers are not mere decoration but the transfigured presence of children who have died. This is the theological trade the poem proposes: we yield up our "buds," and the world receives beauty in return. In its closing stanzas, Wilcox speaks directly to the grieving mother, urging her to find solace in every sunbeam and unfolding leaf, reading in them the presence and comfort of her lost child. This is not permanent consolation but a sustaining mercy until the mother herself dies and is reunited with the child in heaven. The poem thus frames grief within an eschatological arc — earthly loss as temporary separation, nature as a medium of communion, and death itself as a passage toward reunion. The poem is written in a regular stanzaic form with consistent rhyme, lending it the quality of a hymn or spoken comfort rather than a private meditation. Its tone is gentle and earnest throughout, avoiding sentimentality by grounding the grief in precise physical detail — the aching arms, the lonely nights, the lullabies — before lifting toward spiritual reassurance. Wilcox positions herself not as an authority on grief but as a witness and fellow human, which gives the tribute its emotional credibility and warmth.

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1905 · Genre: Elegy, Lyric Poetry, Religious/Spiritual Poetry · 432 words

First lines

My heart that otherwise was glad / (So much God gives to make it so) / This golden afternoon is sad / And troubled with another's woe; / And stranger that I am, I fain / Would send some solace for her pain.

My talks with Sorrow have been brief; / She touched my robe, in gliding by -- / And when I've chanced to meet with Grief, / He's passed me with averted eye. / Yet, through another's pain, I see / Sometimes a glimpse of what may be.

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A Tribute is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1905 CE.

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Work type: Poem
Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Date: 1905 CE
Language: English
Genres: Elegy, Lyric Poetry, Religious/Spiritual Poetry, Consolatory Poetry, Sentimental Poetry
Length: 432 words
Structure: 1 section, 7 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Elegy — The poem is fundamentally a lamentation over loss and death, specifically mourning an infant's death while attempting to console a bereaved mother through acknowledgment of shared grief.
Lyric Poetry — The work emphasizes personal, subjective emotion and inner reflection, with rhythmic musicality conveying the speaker's feelings of empathy and melancholy rather than external narrative events.
Religious/Spiritual Poetry — Central to the poem's meaning is Christian consolation theology, invoking God's purpose, the promise of afterlife reunion, and spiritual transformation of the deceased child into natural beauty and divine light.
Consolatory Poetry — The explicit purpose is to provide comfort to the grieving mother by reframing her loss through spiritual perspective and finding solace in nature and divine providence.