Be Not Weary by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Name: Be Not Weary
Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Be Not Weary" is a devotional lyric poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox built around the biblical injunction drawn from Galatians 6:9 — "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" — which Wilcox transforms into a sustained meditation on perseverance, faith, and the deferred reward of righteous labor. The poem is structured as a series of stanzas, each returning to the same essential emotional movement: the speaker descends into exhaustion and near-despair, then is lifted by the remembered or whispered promise that patient effort will ultimately be rewarded by God. This cyclical pattern — weariness, visitation of consoling words, renewal — gives the poem its cumulative devotional power and reflects a lived spiritual practice rather than abstract theology. In the opening stanzas, the speaker describes a condition of complete depletion: physical toil, emotional numbness, a darkened world in which neither the outer landscape nor the inner life offers comfort. Into this darkness come words "like angel fingers," pressing the spirit toward rest and reassurance. The phrase "in due season, we shall surely reap" functions throughout the poem not merely as quotation but as a nearly sacramental formula — something heard, felt, and received rather than simply read. Wilcox develops the agricultural metaphor of sowing and reaping with consistency and care. The speaker casts seeds — acts of labor, kindness, effort — without visible return, yet accepts on faith that nothing is lost. God is presented as a keeper of accounts, treasuring "each little seed I scatter," ensuring that no genuine effort disappears into void. This theological assurance allows the speaker to continue working even when results are invisible and encouragement is absent. A notable feature of the poem is its honesty about the magnitude of spiritual and physical fatigue. Wilcox does not romanticize suffering or pretend that faith eliminates weariness; rather, the poem's argument is precisely that weariness is real, persistent, and sometimes overwhelming — and that the promise must be received again and again, in each fresh moment of collapse. The words of consolation do not transform circumstances; they restore the will to endure them. The tone throughout is intimate and confessional, characteristic of Wilcox's broader body of work. She writes in the first person with directness, inviting readers to map their own fatigue onto hers. The formal structure — regular rhyme and meter in the tradition of hymn-like verse — reinforces the poem's devotional character, echoing the cadences of the hymns and scripture that clearly shaped Wilcox's sensibility. Thematically, the poem belongs to a tradition of consolatory Christian verse that emphasizes patience, trust in providential timing, and the sufficiency of faithfulness over visible success. Its central conviction is that value does not depend on immediate outcome: labor done with integrity is preserved by God regardless of whether the laborer lives to see its fruit. This is offered not as passive resignation but as active spiritual discipline — a repeated choice to keep working, keep casting seed, keep waiting without bitterness. The repeated emphasis on "sometime" — especially in the italicized and doubled "sometime, _sometime_, I shall reap reward" — captures the poem's emotional center. Wilcox acknowledges the ache of indefinite deferral while insisting that indefinite is not the same as never. The harvest is real; its timing is God's, not the worker's. Accepting that distinction is the spiritual labor the poem performs. By its close, "Be Not Weary" has moved from individual complaint to something approaching communal exhortation, the "I" opening toward a "we" implied by the biblical source. The poem functions as both testimony and encouragement — the speaker having received consolation now transmits it, embodying in the act of writing the very perseverance the poem commends.

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1873 · Genre: Inspirational Poetry, Religious Poetry, Lyric Poetry · 306 words

First lines

Sometimes, when I am toil-worn and aweary, / All tired out, with working long, and well, / And earth is dark, and skies above are dreary, / And heart and soul are all too sick to tell, / These words have come to me, like angel fingers, / Pressing the spirit eyelids down in sleep. / "Oh, let us not be weary in well doing, / For in due season, we shall surely reap."

Open reader

What this Textopian page supports

Be Not Weary is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1873 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Work type: Poem
Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Date: 1873 CE
Language: English
Genres: Inspirational Poetry, Religious Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Spiritual Poetry, Didactic Poetry
Length: 306 words
Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

Good citation fit

Work identity for Be Not Weary by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
Readability and classroom-planning context
Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph

Similar titles

Genres

Inspirational Poetry — The poem's primary purpose is to encourage perseverance and maintain faith during hardship through uplifting biblical verse and the promise of future reward for sustained effort.
Religious Poetry — Contains explicit Christian theology with direct biblical reference (Galatians 6:9), invocations of divine providence, angels, and God's assurance of eventual recompense.
Lyric Poetry — Centers on personal emotional experience and inner spiritual reflection with carefully constructed rhythm, musicality, and first-person introspection of the speaker's struggle and faith.
Spiritual Poetry — Explores spiritual comfort, divine intervention through angelic voices, and the soul's relationship with transcendent faith as primary means of overcoming despair.