More of this Feature • Part 1: Ella Wheeler Wilcox: background • Part 2: The Meeting of the Centuries • Part 3: Woman to Man

Related Resources • More on Emma Wheeler Wilcox • Portrait - 1883 • Portrait - 1903 • More Wilcox poems • Quotations from Wilcox • Wilcox on Christmas • Jan. 1, 1900: Fanny Gage • Women Writers - on this site

Elsewhere on the Web • Biography of Ella Wheeler Wilcox • Ella Wheeler Wilcox - Wisconsin Pioneer • Elizabeth Cady Stanton on January 1901

THE MEETING OF THE CENTURIES.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Poems of Power, 1901

A CURIOUS vision, on mine eyes unfurled
     In the deep night. I saw, or seemed to see,
     Two Centuries meet, and sit down vis-a-vis,
Across the great round table of the world.
One with suggested sorrows in his mien
     And on his brow the furrowed lines of thought.
     And one whose glad expectant presence brought
A glow and radiance from the realms unseen.

Hand clasped with hand, in silence for a space,
     The Centuries sat; the sad old eyes of one
     (As grave paternal eyes regard a son)
Gazing upon that other eager face.
And then a voice, as cadenceless and gray
     As the sea's monody in winter time,
     Mingled with tones melodious, as the chime
Of bird choirs, singing in the dawns of May.

THE OLD CENTURY SPEAKS:

By you, Hope stands. With me, Experience walks.
Like a fair jewel in a faded box,
In my tear-rusted heart, sweet pity lies.
For all the dreams that look forth from your eyes,
And those bright-hued ambitions, which I know       
Must fall like leaves and perish in Time's snow,
(Even as my soul's garden stands bereft,) 
I give you pity! 'tis the one gift left.

THE NEW CENTURY:

Nay, nay, good friend! not pity, but Godspeed, 
Here in the morning of my life I need. 
Counsel, and not condolence; smiles, not tears, 
To guide me through the channels of the years. 
Oh, I am blinded by the blaze of light 
That shines upon me from the Infinite. 
Blurred is my vision by the close approach 
To unseen shores, whereon the times encroach.

THE OLD CENTURY: 

Illusion, all illusion. List and hear 
The Godless cannons, booming far and near. 
Flaunting the flag of Unbelief, with Greed 
For pilot, lo! the pirate age in speed 
Bears on to ruin. War's most hideous crimes 
Besmirch the record of these modern times. 
Degenerate is the world I leave to you, --
My happiest speech to earth will be -- adieu.

THE NEW CENTURY:

You speak as one too weary to be just.
I hear the guns-I see the greed and lust.
The death throes of a giant evil fill
The air with riot and confusion. Ill 
Ofttimes makes fallow ground for Good; and Wrong 
Builds Right's foundation, when it grows too strong. 
Pregnant with promise is the hour, and grand 
The trust you leave in my all-willing hand.

THE OLD CENTURY:

As one who throws a flickering taper's ray 
To light departing feet, my shadowed way 
You brighten with your faith. Faith makes the man. 
Alas, that my poor foolish age outran 
Its early trust in God. The death of art 
And progress follows, when the world's hard heart 
Casts out religion. 'Tis the human brain 
Men worship now, and heaven, to them, means gain.

THE NEW CENTURY:

Faith is not dead, tho' priest and creed may pass, 
For thought has leavened the whole unthinking mass. 
And man looks now to find the God within. 
We shall talk more of love, and less of sin, 
In this new era. We are drawing near 
Unatlassed boundaries of a larger sphere. 
With awe, I wait, till Science leads us on, 
Into the full effulgence of its dawn.