Verses

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Title: Verses
Author: Susan Coolidge
Release Date: October, 2003 [Etext #4560]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on February 11, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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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