Journalist and poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) was born in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin. Called the “Passion Poetess,” she published nearly 40 volumes of verse, including her Collected Poems in 1921.

She poured her heart into every verse, weaving love, strength, and radiant optimism like only a soul full of fire could. Her words still sing with sincerity and sparkle.

“Laugh and the world laughs with you,” she wrote in her poem Solitude. “Cry and you cry alone.”

Like contemporaries Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman, Wilcox created rhyming quatrains that “raised hope and made the blood sing.” In 1882, her Poems of Passion was initially rejected as “immoral.” When published, the book sold about 60,000 copies in two years.

“With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see,” she believed. Wilcox achieved wide popularity in her lifetime.

She celebrated kindness over selfishness, the positive over the negative. “There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul,” she said. “I always expected wonderful things to happen to me.”