Everything You Do
Will Return to You Again
Ella Wheeler
Wilcox
1. The Law
Life is a Shylock; always it demands
The fullest
usurer’s interest for each pleasure.
Gifts are not
freely scattered by its hands:
We make
returns for every borrowed treasure.
Each talent,
each achievement, and each gain
Necessitates
some penalty to pay.
Delight
imposes lassitude and pain,
As certainly
as darkness follows day.
All you bestow
on causes or on men,
Of love or
hate, of malice or devotion,
Somehow,
sometime, shall be returned again -
There is no
wasted toil, no lost emotion.
The motto of
the world is give and take.
It gives you
favours - out of sheer goodwill,
But unless
speedy recompense you make,
You’ll find
yourself presented with its bill.
When rapture
comes to thrill the heart of you,
Take it with
tempered gratitude. Remember,
Some later
time the interest will fall due,
No year brings
June that does not bring December.
2. Recompense
Straight through my heart this fact
to-day,
By Truth’s own
hand is driven:
God [1] never takes one thing away,
But something
else is given.
I did not know
in earlier years,
This law of
love and kindness;
I only mourned
through bitter tears
My loss, in
sorrow’s blindness.
But, ever
following each regret
O’er some
departed treasure,
My sad
repining heart was met
With
unexpected pleasure.
I thought it
only happened so;
But Time this
truth has taught me -
No least thing
from my life can go,
But something
else is brought me.
It is the Law,
complete, sublime;
And now with
Faith unshaken,
In patience I
but bide my time.
When any joy
is taken.
No matter if
the crushing blow
May for the
moment down me,
Still, behind
it waits Love, I know,
With some new
gift to crown me.
NOTE:
[1] In Theosophy, “God” means the Universal Law and the
One Life. (CCA)
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The above poems are reproduced from the
book “Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox”, published by W.P. Nimmo,
Hay, & Mitchell, Edinburgh, undated, probably 1917, 527 pages. “The Law”: pp. 415-416. “Recompense”: pp. 416-417.
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see other writings by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in our associated websites, click
here.
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