[Skip Navigation]

Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Fiction And Fact

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In books I read, how men have lived and died,
   With hopeless love deep in their bosoms hidden.
While she for whom they long in secret sighed,
   Went on her way, nor guessed this flame unbidden.

In real life, I never chanced to see
   The woman who was loved, and did not know it,
And observation proves this fact to me:
   No man can love a woman and not show it.
Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Poems of Experience | Gay and Hancock, 1917
Add Keyword Tags

Separate each tag with a space. You may add as many tags as you'd like to each poem.

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

More Info

This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any Internet device.