The Farewell by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"The Farewell" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a lyric poem built on an extended military metaphor through which the speaker declines to re-enter romantic love, not from inexperience or indifference, but from the hard-won wisdom of someone who has already endured its full cost. The poem opens by distinguishing two types of soldiers: the untried recruit and the battle-scarred veteran. The new soldier, ignorant of what combat truly demands, rushes eagerly into the fight. The drums, the cannon fire, and the promise of glory animate him rather than frighten him, because he has no personal knowledge of what glory actually costs in blood and pain. He craves the experience precisely because he has not yet had it. The veteran is the poem's moral and emotional center. He does not romanticize conflict. Having survived warfare, having seen its true face, he feels no pull toward glory and no desire to re-enter the fray. His reluctance is not cowardice — it is recognition. He has paid the price and carries the scars, and that knowledge alone is sufficient reason to refuse a repeat engagement. Wilcox then pivots this martial framework directly onto the terrain of love. The speaker reveals herself to be the veteran in an emotional sense. Someone who has never loved, who has always been a stranger to its demands, might linger willingly in the spell of a new attachment, unafraid of where it leads. But the speaker is not that person. She has known love's warfare. She has experienced its dangers, its wounds, and its aftermath. That knowledge does not make her long to revisit those depths. Instead, it produces the poem's closing word and its title: farewell. The farewell is therefore not a casual dismissal. It is a deliberate, self-protective withdrawal made by someone who fully understands what she is stepping away from. The poem carries an undercurrent of regret without indulging in it. The speaker does not claim the new attachment holds no appeal; she claims only that she has already learned what such attachments cost, and she is unwilling to pay that price again. The poem's emotional power comes from this restraint. Wilcox does not dramatize past heartbreak or describe the wounds in detail. The mere existence of the veteran's scarred experience is evidence enough. The reader understands that the speaker has loved deeply and suffered for it, without needing those circumstances spelled out. The economy of the metaphor does the work: anyone who knows what battle is does not need it described to justify their refusal to return to the field. Structurally, the poem moves in three clean strides — the naïve soldier, the experienced soldier, and the speaker herself — each tercet of stanzas building the logic that culminates in the farewell. The argument is formal and controlled even as the emotion beneath it is raw. This tension between composed form and suppressed feeling is characteristic of Wilcox's best lyric work, where sentiment is disciplined rather than discharged. The title names both the poem's subject and its speech act. The farewell is what the poem performs in the act of speaking it. By the final line, the reader understands that the entire poem has been addressed to a would-be lover, and that the speaker's choice to articulate her reasons so carefully is itself a kind of tribute to what she is refusing — she does not simply walk away wordlessly, but explains, honors the pull of the attachment, and then declines it with full consciousness of what she is doing.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1905 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Metaphorical Poetry · 140 words
First lines
'Tis not the untried soldier new to danger / Who fears to enter into active strife. / Amidst the roll of drums, the cannon's rattle, / He craves adventure, and thinks not of life.
But the scarred veteran knows the price of glory, / He does not court the conflict or the fray. / He has no longing to rehearse that gory / And most dramatic act, of war's dark play.
He who to love has always been a stranger / All unafraid may linger in your spell. / My heart has known the warfare, and its danger. / It craves no repetition -- so farewell.
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The work is structured as verse with regular meter and rhyme scheme, expressing deeply personal emotional reflection on love and farewell.
- Romantic Poetry — Centered on the speaker's experience with romantic love, exploring intimate emotional connection and its painful aftermath.
- Metaphorical Poetry — Uses extended military metaphor—soldiers, warfare, battle—to represent the emotional trials and psychological costs of romantic attachment.
- Farewell Literature — The poem's dramatic core is a deliberate renunciation and goodbye, culminating in the word 'farewell' as the final emotional statement.
Tags
poetry · lyric poem · farewell · parting · love · romance · heartbreak · separation · longing · melancholy · memory · emotional
What this Textopian page supports
The Farewell is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1905 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: 1905 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Metaphorical Poetry, Farewell Literature, Melancholic Poetry
- Length: 140 words
- Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
Good citation fit
- Work identity for The Farewell 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