Sarah Brown
Mr. Lopez
English III
22 May 2015
T4

Ella Wheeler Wilcox In the poems Solitude and It might have been by Ella Wheeler Wilcox there are strong comparisons that can be made between the two by using both the style used in each poem and the substance. The poems are almost complete opposites, yet are very similar, Solitude is about being alone in the world or feeling isolated, while It might have been is meant to be empowering because the author encourages the readers to not regret anything or to not let chances slip by. Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born November 5, 1850 in Johnstown, Wisconsin. She began writing poetry at a very young age and was a recognized poet before she had even graduated high school. She was constantly compared to Walt Whitman because of their way of writing; her poetry was sentimental and romantic. Something that set them apart though was their form; Ella Wheeler Wilcox maintained a very traditional form unlike Walt Whitman. Her most famous work was the Poems of Passion. She married Robert Wilcox in 1884. Soon after her husband’s passing in 1916, Ella passed away due to cancer on October 30, 1919. Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death. The poem Solitude talks about being isolated from the world when you are feeling down and enjoying everything around you when you are feeling happy. Laugh and the world laughs with you; / Weep and you weep alone (Solitude. Lines 1 and 2) these two lines in the poem, I believe, show best what the poet is trying to say. When you are happy everything around you seems to be perfect and you tend to feel loved, when you are sad it almost seems as if the world around you disappears and you are completely alone. At the end of the poem Wilcox says, But one by one we must all file on/ Through the narrow aisles of pain (Solitude.