Poems of Progress and New Thought Pastels

"Poems of Progress and New Thought Pastels" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a collection of poetry written in the early 20th century. The verses explore themes of love, existence, societal issues, and the human experience, intertwining reflections on personal growth and a broader philosophical outlook on life. The opening of the collection features a preface and several poems that set the tone for the themes that will be explored throughout. It begins with an invocation of "Love's Language," questioning how love expresses itself, suggesting its complexity and depth. This is followed by the poem "The Land Between," which speaks of the connection between souls that transcend earthly bounds, and "Love's Mirage," where the pursuit of love is depicted as both an alluring vision and a painful reality. The early poems present a tapestry of emotive expressions—melding the idealistic with the painful—and establish love's central role in both personal fulfillment and universal struggles, inviting readers to reflect upon their own experiences and aspirations. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. Her works include the collection Poems of Passion and the poem "Solitude", which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.