Dying by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1905)

Name: Dying
Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Dying" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a dramatic monologue spoken by a woman in her final moments, addressed to the man she has loved unrequitedly throughout her life. The poem's central tension lies in the profound asymmetry of feeling: she loves him deeply and has done so for years, while he does not return her affection. Even so, she implores him to hold her, press his cheek to hers, and kiss her as she dies — not out of any pretense that love is mutual, but because this physical closeness is the sole earthly comfort she has ever desired from him and the only thing she asks before she departs. The speaker is fully lucid about the nature of her situation. She acknowledges that her love has been "wild and wrong, / Unrequited, hopeless, vain," and she does not romanticize or excuse it. She even questions herself — "Was it weak, unwomanly, / Thus to shrine you in my heart?" — suggesting an awareness of social expectations around female dignity and self-restraint. Yet she confesses that she struggled against her love and failed. Her heart, she explains, is not the kind that loves lightly and moves on; it is a heart that, once pierced, burns fiercely and continuously until it is extinguished by death itself. Rather than expressing bitterness or reproach toward the man, the speaker is strikingly at peace. She tells him not to weep for her, because she is glad to go. Life, she declares, "was wearisome at best" — a confession that her years have been marked by the exhausting labor of carrying an unreturned love. Death is not a tragedy to her but a release, a sinking into rest after prolonged and futile longing. The emotional register is one of resignation and even relief, punctuated by a final, urgent tenderness. The poem's power derives from the intimacy of the deathbed scene and the starkness of the speaker's self-knowledge. She asks for nothing more than to be held and kissed once before she dies — and she asks this of a man she knows does not love her. The gesture she seeks is theatrical in its pathos but entirely human in its impulse: to feel, at the last moment, what one has spent a lifetime missing. Wilcox constructs a figure who is neither pitiable nor heroic in a conventional sense, but achingly honest about the cost of loving without return. Formally, the poem proceeds in short, regular stanzas with an insistent rhyme scheme that mirrors the speaker's directness. The rhythm is brisk, almost urgent, suited to a woman who has little time left and chooses to spend it not in recrimination but in petition. The repetition of physical imperatives — "lift me," "clasp me," "kiss me" — keeps the poem grounded in the body at the moment the body is failing. This contrast between physical proximity and emotional distance, between the warmth of an embrace and the coldness of unrequited feeling, is the poem's defining irony. Wilcox wrote widely about love, longing, and emotional excess, and "Dying" exemplifies her willingness to give full voice to female desire and its frustrations without softening either into sentiment or moral lesson. The speaker does not repent her love, does not warn others away from it, and does not conclude with any redemptive turn. She simply states what she has felt, what she has lost, and what she wants in the seconds remaining — and in that plainness lies the poem's considerable force.

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1905 · Genre: Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Romantic Poetry · 323 words

First lines

Let me lie upon your breast, / Lift me up, and let me twine / 'Round your neck my arms, and rest / With your cheek laid close to mine. / Kiss me, kiss me tenderly; / I am dying now, you know; / Though you feel no love for me, / Clasp me, kiss me, ere I go.

I have lingered many years, / For a moment, love, like this; / Oh! my darling! let no tears / Mar this drop of earthly bliss; / Do not weep because you know / I am dropping off to rest; / I am very glad to go, / Life was wearisome at best.

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Dying 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: Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Elegy, Confessional Poetry
Length: 323 words
Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Love Poetry — The poem's central subject is unrequited love and the speaker's desperate final plea for physical affection from an unresponsive beloved, making love the dominant thematic concern.
Lyric Poetry — The work is fundamentally a lyrical expression of personal emotion and inner feeling expressed through first-person perspective with immediate emotional intensity.
Romantic Poetry — Exhibits romantic sensibilities through passionate emotional expression, idealization of the beloved, and emphasis on feeling over reason.
Elegy — Contemplates death and mortality with a mournful, reflective tone, expressing sorrow about life's hardships and the speaker's approaching end.