This World by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"This World" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a lyric poem that mounts a deliberate philosophical argument against habitual pessimism, insisting that dwelling on sorrow neither diminishes it nor improves the human condition. The poem opens by conceding the premise of the melancholic: yes, the world is a sad place, and no living soul can honestly deny it. But Wilcox immediately pivots on this concession, using it as the foundation for her central claim — that lamenting sorrow through dirges and tearful songs accomplishes nothing constructive. The first stanza issues a direct call to action: cast aside the mournful lays and choose instead the songs that gladden, making the most of the brief years available to us. The second movement of the poem complicates and enriches this argument by resisting the temptation to deny suffering altogether. Wilcox does not preach a naive optimism. She acknowledges that the world at its saddest is genuinely sad, that humanity contains selfish and morally compromised people alongside the virtuous, and that life includes the cold, bleak winds of November as surely as it includes June sunshine. Her rhetorical strategy is one of proportion and selective attention: the June hours are not more real than the November ones, but they are more worthy of deliberate remembrance. The choice of what to hold in mind is itself a moral and practical act. She argues by analogy that the existence of selfish creatures encountered in the walks of life does not constitute proof that the world possesses no redeeming feature. Beauty, bloom, blossoming flowers, souls of truth, and hearts of worth exist alongside the darkness. To fixate exclusively on the negative is therefore not a form of honesty but a form of distortion — a selective blindness to half of what is real. The poem's closing movement returns to the idea of memory and mental habit. Wilcox observes that when we revisit a joy we have known, the act of recollection can actually amplify it — we easily make it double. This psychological insight underpins her entire argument: attention and memory are not passive mirrors of reality but active forces that shape emotional experience. To rehearse grief is to compound it; to rehearse joy is to multiply it. The choice, she implies, is always available to us. The poem closes by circling back to its opening concession with deliberate structural symmetry. The world is sad — this has never been in dispute. But singing endlessly about that sadness will not lessen the want or woe. The repetition is not merely formal; it signals that the argument has been made, tested against its own premise, and confirmed. The sadness is real; the futility of fixating on it is equally real. Wilcox writes in a ballad-like meter with regular rhyme, giving the poem a musical accessibility that itself enacts the argument — the form is one of the gladder songs she advocates. The diction is plain and direct, the imagery drawn from the natural world and the commonplace rhythms of social life. The tone throughout is firm without being hectoring, pragmatic without being dismissive of genuine pain. The poem belongs to the tradition of American moral verse that seeks to equip ordinary readers with a usable philosophy of daily life. Its core position is not that suffering is an illusion but that the response to suffering is a matter of will and habit, and that cultivating gratitude and selective positive attention is both more honest and more humane than the alternative of perpetual lamentation.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1873 · Genre: Poetry, Philosophical Poetry, Inspirational Poetry · 358 words
First lines
This world is a sad, sad place I know; / And what soul living can doubt it. / But it will not lessen the want and woe, / To be always singing about it. / Then away with the songs that are full of tears, / Away with dirges that sadden. / Let us make the most of our fleeting years, / By singing the lays that gladden.
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This World is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1873 CE.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Date: 1873 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Poetry, Philosophical Poetry, Inspirational Poetry, Lyrical Poetry, Reflective Poetry
- Length: 358 words
- Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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Genres
- Poetry — This work is fundamentally a poem written in verse form with regular rhyme scheme and metrical structure characteristic of traditional poetry.
- Philosophical Poetry — The poem explores fundamental questions about human existence, the nature of the world, and how one should live, presenting a philosophical argument about perspective and resilience.
- Inspirational Poetry — The central message advocates for focusing on positive aspects of life despite its hardships, encouraging readers to choose joy and optimism as a life philosophy.
- Lyrical Poetry — The work employs musical language, emotional resonance, and personal reflection characteristic of lyric poetry, designed to evoke feeling and contemplation.
Tags
poetry · American literature · lyric verse · philosophical · spirituality · love · nature · optimism · individualism · self-reliance · human experience · morality