Solitude By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain
Because of the rhythm and rhyme to this poem, the tone seems very easy going and playful, almost as if its a flowing song of life, like these are the ongoing rules of life and have been for years. Almost every line is related to the one below it or above it giving the opposite to what is said. In this poem, there is no gray area in life, everything is black and white. Whats unique about this poem is that usually poems are very wishy washy and metaphorical making the reader believe there to be no correct answer, but the speaker is giving exact statements. Its interesting how the poem starts of about laughter and ends with the word pain. To me, this sort of represented ones life. We all start out as young children believing everything is good in the world, but we soon figure out that life is not as pleasant as it seems. We learn that the world doesn't really care about us an individual because it has "troubles of its own." This poem kind of reminds me of a list of guidelines and if we follow them we just might have a chance of surviving. "Solitude" is in a way, telling us what kind of person to me, or at least telling us what kind of person the world expects us to be.
