Ina D. Coolbrith: Verses about Joy

Upon the patient earth
A thousand tempests beat,
To call to life the flowers
That make her glad and sweet.
So, o’er the human heart
The countless griefs that roll
But wake immortal joy
To bloom within the soul.

I know a shadowed room
Whereto none enters;
I know a heart wherein
No joy-light centers.
Room and heart alike are cold,
Old, cold and old.

Once light was tenant there,
Gladness was a part;
Once a young rose in bloom
With warmth, the heart.
But that was long, aye! Long ago!
So long ago!

Sunshine and melody follow the rain-
Patter the rain-drops merrily!
Spring joy follows the winter pain,
Then, ho! For earth’s green holiday.

Flutter the rovers from over the sea-
Greet them, robin, right heartily!
Nest and twitter in field and tree,
And O! for loves sweet hoiday.

Wait, and the winds of the winter cease:
Up, little heart, beat hopefully!
After the warfare cometh peace-
And O! for a life’s glad holiday.

Unto the earth the Summer comes again:
She has, to quench her thirst, the dews and rain;
She has glad light about her all life’s hour,
And love for gracious dower.

She makes the valleys pleasant for the herds;
Her seeds and berries ripen for the birds,
And cool about their nests she deftly weaves
A screen of tender leaves.

Her soft, delicious breath revives the land;
Her many flowers she feeds with lavish hand;
Clothes the bare hill, and to the rugged place
Gives comeliness and grace.

To all things else she cometh, once a year,
With strong, new life, with beauty and glad cheer-
To all things else: Ah, sometime, it must be
That she will come to me!

There’s Pan!
See-through the branches yonder!
Where has he been, I wonder,
The long, long span?
Now, listen: you will hear,
The pipes-the pipes o’ Pan

Why, only yesterday
I saw a Graybeard, there;
A Graybeard, bent and old,
Under the boughs a-cold
And bleak and bare.
Now, what does that mad boy hold,
And wisely scan?
Then, lifting high in the air,
With a leap and a glad hurray,
And a laugh like the song of May,
Toss-far away?
Why ‘tis the Graybeard’s mask!
‘What does it mean? ’ you ask.

Why-Pan!
Just Pan!
Pan, since the world began:
Joy supernal, -
Youth eternal-
PAN!

(Eccl. VII,3) To ‘Uncle George Bromley

I hold not that sorrow than laughter
Is better for man;
The storm-clouds that darken the heavens
Than rainbows that span.
Ah! rather the skies in there shinning
Than dreary with rain, -
And the heart that is lightsome in gladness
Than heavy with pain.

There are thorns in the smoothest of pathways
Enough and to spare;
No wheat-field so carefully tended
That knows not the tare;
But the harvester gathers the harvest
In the gold of its sheaves,
And the briar is forgot of the branches
In the laugh of its leaves.

The voice in its merriment ringing
The laughter-bells clear!
May their melody linger about him,
And the seed he has sown
Of joy in the heart-fields of others
Find bloom in his own.

O Ye laggard comers
Of the rosy summers!
Dear, delicious vagrants,
Hives of hoarded fragrance,
Through the golden
Days of balm and bloom, to open wide,
Wondering, dewy eyes at Christmas-tide!

Now that day grown chill is
Come the calla-lilies,
Lifting, row on row,
Hoods of scented snow-
Fit for holiest altar,
Psalm and psalter:
Vestal-nuns your courtly robes beside,
Truants of sunshine, waifs of summer-tide!

Welcome, joy’s sweet keepers!
Balmy little sleepers
Through the night and noon
Of your vanished June.
Glad the sky that thrills you,
Bird that trills you!
Fairer than to bridegroom comes the bride,
O sacred roses of the Christmas-tide!

“The song were sweeter and better
If only the thought were glad.”
Be hidden the chafe of the fetter,
The scars of the wounds you have had;
Be silent of strife and endeavor,
But shout of the victory won!
You may sit in the shadow forever,
If only you’ll sing of the sun.

There are hearts, you must know, over tender
With the wine of the joy-cup of years;
One might dim for a moment the splendor
Of eyes unaccustomed to tears:
So sing, if you must, with the gladness
That brimmed the lost heart of your youth,
Lest you breath, in the song and its sadness,
The secret of life at its truth.

O, violets, born of the valley,
You are sweet in the sun and the dew;
But your sisters, in yonder dim alley,
Are sweeter-and paler-than you!
O, birds, you are blith in the meadow,
But your mates of the forest I love;
And sweeter their songs in the shadow,
Though sadder the singing thereof!

To the weary in life’s wildernesses
The soul of the singer belongs.
Small need, in your green, sunny places,
Glad dwellers, have you of my songs.
For you the blith birds of the meadow
Trill silverly sweet, every one;
But I can not sit in the shadow
Forever, and sing of the sun.

Love and I, one summer day,
Took a walk together:
Oh, how beautiful the way
Through the blooming heather!
Far-off bells rang matin-chimes,
Birds sang, silver-voicing;
And our happy hearts beat time
To the earth’s rejoicing.
Well-a-day! ah well-a-day!
Then pale Grief had missed me,
And Mirth and I kept company,
Ere Cupid kissed me.

Love ran idly where he would,
Child-like, all unheeding;
I as carelessly pursued
The pathway he was leading,
Till upon the shadowed side
Of a cool, swift river,
Where the sunbeams smote the tide
Goldenly a-quiver:
Well-a-day! Ah well-a-day!
“Love, ” I cried, “come, rest thee.”
Ah, but Heart and I were gay,
Ere Cupid kissed me!

Shadows of the summer-cloud
Fell on near and far land,
Fragrantly the branches bowed
Every leafy garland;
While, with shining head at rest,
Next my heart reclining,
Love’s white arms, with soft caress,
Round my neck were twining;
Till—ah, well! Ah, well-a-day!
Love, who can resist thee? —
On the river-banks that day,
Cupid kissed me.

Woe is me! In cheerless plight,
By the cold sad river,
Seek I Love, who, taken flight,
Comes no more forever—
Love, from whom more pain than bliss
Every heart obtaineth;
For the joy soon vanishes,
While the pang remaineth.
Well-a-day! ah, well-a-day!
Would, Love, I had missed thee!
Peace and I are twain for aye,
Since Cupid kissed me!

Aye, but my feet are light upon the hills!
Light as the leaping deer, light as the wind,
Light as the soaring bird-for winged with joy!
And my heart sings (hearken the voice of it!)
With all my forests in the song-the streams-
And the great Sea that rims my golden shores.
Nay, from the deeps of far Creation’s morn
The slumbering echoes that are never mute-
The primal throes of all the things that are-
God busy with His world in fashioning;
Through the long aeon days of change on change,
God busy with His world in fashioning still.

Aye, am I glad! For is not this fair land-
Fairest of all lands, wreathed and crowned to-day
As never in the ages gone before?
Past now the days of desert solitudes,
The summits lifted lonely to the stars,
First that but knew the padded moccasin,
And then the Hero-Saint who bore the Cross
To it, with Him, the Life, the Nazarene!
And then the livid lure and dross of gold;
Then-(from a weed so ill a bloom so fair!)
Vast fields of fruit and harvest; thronging homes;
Science with searching gaze demanding truth-
And Art to add new perfectness to Art-
And greater, sweeter, dearer far then all,
Across the mighty vastness of sea
The living voice of human Brotherhood,
And peal of the great bell of London town,
That rang from sacred walls to speak to mankind,
One heart, one home, one people and one God!

O, land of mine-my land that is so loved-
‘Lift up thine eyes unto the hills’-nay, lift
Thine eyes unto the stars-make thou thy goal
As fair and great as thou art sweet and fair;
Make all of ill to die from out thy bounds
As dies the ill weed from the tended soil,
And thy fair bosom bloom as blooms the rose.
Peace brood with thee- a Dove with folded wings-
And Love thy Law as it was Christ’s one Law-
Wherewith no thing of wrong can ever dwell.
So shalt thou be, white as thy Shasta’s snows,
In thy divinest grace and purity
Evangel of the nations, speaking Man
God busy with His world of fashioning still.

No flower in all the land-
No leaf upon the tree,
Blossom, or bud, or fruit,
But an icy fringe instead;
And the birds are flown, or dead,
And the world is mute.
The white, cold moonbeams shiver
On the dark face of the river,
While still and slow the waters flow
Out to the open sea;
The moveless pine-trees stand,
Black fortressed on the hill;
And white, and cold, and still,
Wherever the eye may go,
The ghostly snow:
The vast, unbroken silence of snow.

I l; ook out upon the night,
And the darkly flowing river,
And the near stars, with no quiver
In their calm and steady light,
And listen for the voice of the great sea,
And the silence answers me.
O Sea of the West, that comes
With a sound as of rolling drums,
With a muffled beat
As of marching feet,
Up the long lifts of sand,
The golden drifts of sand,
On the long, long shining strand.
An opal, rimmed with blue,
An emerald, shinning through
The pearl’s and ruby’s dyes,
And crests that catch the blaze
Of the diamond’s rays,
Under thy perfect skies!

O Land of the West, I know
How the field flowers bud and blow,
And the grass springs and the grain,
To the first soft touch and summons of the rain.
O, the music of the rain!
O, the music of the streams!
Dream music, heard in dreams,
As I listen through the night,
While the snow falls, still and white.
I hear the branches sway
In the breeze’s play,
And the forests’ solemn hymns:
Almost I hear the stir
Of the sap in their mighty limbs
Like blood in living veins!
The rose is in the lanes,
And the insects buzz and whir;
And where the purple fills
The spaces of the hills,
In one swift month the poppy will lift up
Its golden cup.
And O, and O, in the sunshine and the rain,
Rings out that perfect strain, -
The earth’s divinest song!
My bird with the plain, brown breast,
My lark of the golden west,
Up, up, thy joy notes soar,
And sorrow is no more,
And pain has passed away
In the rapture of thy lay!
Up, up, the glad notes throng,
And the soul is borne along
On the pinions of thy song,
Up from the meadow’s sod,
Up from the world’s unrest,
To peace, to heaven, to God!

And I listen through the silence of the night,
While the snow falls, still and white.