The Project Gutenberg EBook of Verses, by Susan Coolidge

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Title: Verses

Author: Susan Coolidge

Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4560] Release Date: October, 2003 First Posted: February 11, 2002

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VERSES ***

Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

VERSES.

BY

SUSAN COOLIDGE.

TO J. H. AND E. W. H.

  Nourished by peaceful suns and gracious dew,
  Your sweet youth budded and your sweet lives grew,
  And all the world seemed rose-beset for you.

  The rose of beauty was your mutual dower,
  The stainless rose of love, an early flower,
  The stately blooms of ease and wealth and power.

  And treading thus on pathways flower-bestrewn,
  It well might be, that, cold and careless grown,
  You both had lived for your own joys alone.

  But, holding all these fair things as in trust.
  Gently you walked, still scattering on the dust
  Of harder roads, which others tread, and must,—

  Your heritage of brightness, not a ray
  Of noontide sought you out, but straight away
  You caught and halved it with some darker day:

  And as the sweet saint's loaves were turned, it is said,
  To roses, so your roses turned to bread,
  That hungering souls and weary might be fed.

  Dear friends, my poor words do but paint you wrong,
  Nor can I utter, in one trivial song,
  The goodness I have honored for so long.

  Only this leaf, a single petal flung,
  One chord from a full harmony unsung,
  May speak the life-long love that lacks a tongue.

CONTENTS.

  To J. H. and E. W. H.
  Prelude
  Commissioned
  The Cradle Tomb in Westminster Abbey
  "Of such as I have"
  A Portrait
  When?
  On the Shore
  Among the Lilies
  November
  Embalmed
  Ginevra Degli Amieri
  Easter Lilies
  Ebb-Tide
  Flood-Tide
  A Year
  Tokens
  Her Going
  A Lonely Moment
  Communion
  A Farewell
  Ebb and Flow
  Angelus
  The Morning Comes Before the Sun
  Laborare est Orare
  Eighteen
  Outward Bound
  From East to West
  Una
  Two Ways to Love
  After-Glow
  Hope and I
  Left Behind
  Savoir c'est Pardonner
  Morning
  A Blind Singer
  Mary
  When Love went
  Overshadowed
  Time to Go
  Gulf-Stream
  My White Chrysanthemum
  Till the Day Dawn
  My Birthday
  By the Cradle
  A Thunder Storm
  Through the Door
  Readjustment
  At the Gate
  A Home
  The Legend of Kintu
  Easter
  Bind-Weed
  April
  May
  Secrets
  How the Leaves Came Down
  Barcaroles
  My Rights
  Solstice
  In the Mist
  Within
  Menace
  "He That Believeth Shall Not Make Haste"
  My Little Ghost
  Christmas
  Benedicam Domino

PRELUDE.

  Poems are heavenly things,
  And only souls with wings
  May reach them where they grow,
  May pluck and bear below,
  Feeding the nations thus
  With food all glorious.

  Verses are not of these;
  They bloom on earthly trees,
  Poised on a low-hung stem,
  And those may gather them
  Who cannot fly to where
  The heavenly gardens are.

  So I by devious ways
  Have pulled some easy sprays
  From the down-dropping bough
  Which all may reach, and now
  I knot them, bud and leaf,
  Into a rhymed sheaf.

  Not mine the pinion strong
  To win the nobler song;
  I only cull and bring
  A hedge-row offering
  Of berry, flower, and brake,
  If haply some may take.

VERSES.

COMMISSIONED.

"Do their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and life of it."—ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY

  What can I do for thee, Beloved,
    Whose feet so little while ago
    Trod the same way-side dust with mine,
  And now up paths I do not know
    Speed, without sound or sign?

  What can I do? The perfect life
    All fresh and fair and beautiful
    Has opened its wide arms to thee;
  Thy cup is over-brimmed and full;
    Nothing remains for me.

  I used to do so many things,—
    Love thee and chide thee and caress;
    Brush little straws from off thy way,
  Tempering with my poor tenderness
    The heat of thy short day.

  Not much, but very sweet to give;
    And it is grief of griefs to bear
    That all these ministries are o'er,
  And thou, so happy, Love, elsewhere,
    Never can need me more:—

  And I can do for thee but this
    (Working on blindly, knowing not
    If I may give thee pleasure so):
  Out of my own dull, burdened lot
    I can arise, and go

  To sadder lives and darker homes,
    A messenger, dear heart, from thee
    Who wast on earth a comforter,
  And say to those who welcome me,
    I am sent forth by her.

  Feeling the while how good it is
    To do thy errands thus, and think
    It may be, in the blue, far space,
  Thou watchest from the heaven's brink,—
    A smile upon my face.

  And when the day's work ends with day,
    And star-eyed evening, stealing in,
    Waves a cool hand to flying noon,
  And restless, surging thoughts begin,
    Like sad bells out of tune,

  I'll pray: "Dear Lord, to whose great love
    Nor bound nor limit line is set,
    Give to my darling, I implore,
  Some new sweet joy not tasted yet,
    For I can give no more."

  And with the words my thoughts shall climb
    With following feet the heavenly stair
    Up which thy steps so lately sped,
  And, seeing thee so happy there,
    Come back half comforted.

THE CRADLE TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

  A little, rudely sculptured bed,