The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1918-11-28
:. p o Z T r Y :.
Selected

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, while making the
hospitals of France, cheering as best she
could the American wounded, was called
upon again and again to :write just few
lines for u.s." and below are some of her
responses:
AT hospital No. q she read the follow
ing verse from "The Aviator
s'He is over the spear of human fear,
He has come into touch with things supernal.
At each mans gate death stands await,
And dying Fl ying were better than lying
In sick beds crying for life eternal.
Better to fly half way to God
Than burrov too long like worm in the
Sod
For the Surgical Ward of Camp No. u,
she wrote the following while seated in the
ward:
ssFor hold it harder to lie in your bed
And stare at the ceiling and four dull walls,
Than to fight in the open where sunligh,
falls
With Gods big universe over your head.
He must fire away till an answer is given
And forces invisible come to his aid;
For these are Gods camps where earth.
heroes are made;
And hard is the training at Camp u -
At the request of Col Chambers for some
lines to keep the boys keyed up. "Passine
The Buck" was written:
ooh. if it's to cook, or if it's to fight,
Or if it's to trundle a truck,
Get on the job, and do it right,
with all your muscle and mind and
might.
| Don'f pass the buck!
"The wheels of the earth have sunk,
| alack,
| Deep in wars mire and muck.
If you want to put it again on its track,
| Don't shove;your load on another mans
| back.
| Don't pass the buck
Once she put her whole heart in a poem
"Soldiers Come Back Clean'':
"This is the song for a soldier
To sing as he rides from home
To the fields afar where the battles are
Or over the oceans foam.
Whatever the dangers waiting
In the lands have not seen,
If do not fall-1f come back at all
Then will come back clean.
81 may lie in the mud of the trenches,
may reek with blood and mire,
But will control, by the God in my soul
The might of my mans desire.
l will fight my foe in the open,
But my sword shall be sharp and keen
For the foe within who would lure me t.
sin,
And will come back clean.
81 may not leave for my children
Brave medals that have worn,
But the blood in my vains shall leave n
stains
On bride or on babes unborn.
And the scars that my body may carry
Shall not be from deeds obscene,
For my will shall say to the beast, OBEY
And l will come back clean.
ooh, not on the fields of slaughter,
} And not in the prison cell
Or in hunger and cold is the story told
By war of its darkest hell.
But the old, old sin of the senses
} Can tell what that word may mean
To the soldiers, wives and to the innocer
lives,
: And will come back clean:''
Of course she referred to moral cleannes.
bat the boys pretended not to understand
and called out: eve wash every Saturda
night. How about the girls? Are yor
, baths as good as ours?'' And so on.
So accepting the jibes, she sat down an
wrote parody on her own verses, lettin
I loose all the disgust of all American wome
workers for French hotels which regularl
cut off the hot water from the bathroom
to save coal:
This is the song for woman,
As she crosses the seas of storm,
To the lands afar, where bath tubs are
And water that runs and is warm.