Ina D. Coolbrith: Verses about Life

I had been dead so many years-
And I had missed you so.
I thought in heaven there were no tears,
But ah, their weary flow!
And when at last the joy-word came,
An hour to wander back,
My spirit flashed, a living flame,
Along that mystic track.

I sped the pathway of the stars
And the abyss of night;
Past all space-barriers and bars
I winged my eager flight;
I found you, Love! O bitter day!
You had remembered not!
Farther than life itself away-
My very name forgot.

I can not count my life a loss,
With all its length of evil days.
I hold them only as the dross
About its gold, whose worth outweighs.
For each and all I give Him praise.

For drawing nearer to the brink
That leadeth down to final rest,
I see with clearer eyes, I think,
And much that vexed me and oppressed,
Have learned was right and just and best.

So, though I may but dimly guess
Its far intent, this gift of His
I honor; nor would know the less
One sorrow, or in pain or bliss
Have other than it was and is.

AH! little flower, upspringing, azure-eyed,
The meadow-brook beside,
Dropping delicious balms
Into the tender palms
Of lover-winds, that woo with light caress,
In still contentedness,
Living and blooming thy brief summer-day: —
So, wiser far than I,
That only dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my listless life away.

Ah! sweetheart birds, a-building your wee house
In the broad-leavëd boughs,
Pausing with merry trill
To praise each other’s skill,
And nod your pretty heads with pretty pride;
Serenely satisfied
To trill and twitter love’s sweet roundelay: —
So, happier than I,
That, lonely, dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my lonely life away.

Brown-bodied bees, that scent with nostrils fine
The odorous blossom-wine,
Sipping, with heads half thrust
Into the pollen dust
Of rose and hyacinth and daffodil,
To hive, in amber cell,
A honey feasting for the winter-day: —
So, better far than I,
Self-wrapt, that dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my useless life away.

(“H. H.”)

What songs found voice upon those lips,
What magic dwelt within the pen,
Whose music into silence slips-
Whose spell lives not again!

For her the clamorous to-day
The dreamful yesterday became;
The brands upon dead hearths that lay
Leaped into living flame....

Clear ring the silvery Mission bells
Their calls to vesper and to mass;
O’er vineyard slopes, thro’ fruited dells,
The long processions pass;

The pale Franciscan lifts in air
The Cross, above the kneeling throng;
Their simple world how sweet with pray’r,
With chant and matin-song!

There, with her dimpled, lifted hands,
Parting the mustard’s golden plumes,
The dusk maid, Ramona, stands
Amid the sea of blooms.

And Alessandro, type of all
His broken tribe, forevermore
An exile, hears the stranger call
Within his father’s door.

The visions vanish and are not,
Still are the sounds of peace and strive, -
Passed with the earnest heart and thought
Which lured them back to life.

O, sunset land! O, land of vine,
And rose, and bay! In silence here
Let fall one little leaf of thine,
With love, upon her bier.

Who say these walls are lonely-these-
They may not see the motley throng
That people it, as thick as bees
The scented clover beds among.

They may no hear, when footfalls cease,
And living voices, for awhile,
The speech, in many tongues and keys,
Adown each shadowy aisle.

Here are the friends that ne’er betray;
Companionship that never tires;
Here voices call from voiceless clay,
And ashes dead renew there fires.

For death can touch the flesh alone;
Immortal thought, from age to age
Lives on, and here, in varied tone,
It speaks from many a page.

Here searching History waits- the deeds
Of man and nation to rehearse:
Here clear-eyed Science walk and reads
The secrets of the universe.

Here lands and seas, from pole to pole,
The traveler spreads before the eye;
Here Faith unfolds her mystic scroll
The soul to satisfy.

Here Homer chants heroic Troy,
Here Dante strikes the harp in pain,
Here Shakespeare sounds the grief, the joy,
Of all human life and strain.

Alone and silent? Why, ‘tis rife
With form and sound! The hosts of thought
Are dwellers here; and thought is life.
Without it earth and man are not.

To war and statecraft leave the bay-
A greater crown to these belongs;
The rulers of the world are they
Who make its books and songs.

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.

Most lives lie more in the shadow, I think, than in the sun,
And the shadow from some is lifted only when life is done;
And so, though I wear mourning, I am glad at heart to know,
She rests in her still white slumber, under the Christmas snow.

She was to have married Philip. He sailed withhis ship in June.
How long they walked by the sea that night, under the waning moon!
“A year and a day of parting, and a lifetime, sweet, with you.”
Ah me, but we dream life bravely, if only our dreams came true!

She spoke of him very little: ‘twas never her way to talk;
But the restless nights, the restless days, the long, long tireless walk,
Forever beside the ocean. I fancied, almost, there grew
A picture of ocean within her eyes. O tend’rest eyes I knew!

Forever the ocean! Until her heart seemed even to time its beat
With the pulse and the throb of the waters that drifted to her feet;
She smiled when the sea was smiling, and her face in the tempest roar
Grew white as the fury of breakers, that beat on the rocky shore.

Again and again in dead of night, I wakened to find-ah me! -
The still, white form at the window that looked on the lonely sea.
Forever and ever the ocean! And I thought, with yearning pain,
“If only the year were over, and Philip were back again! ”

June passed into December. We were merry at Christmas-tide.
Berry and oak and holly, and folk from the country-side;
Music and feast and frolic, laughter and life and light-
I never missed poor Maggie, till far into the night.

Why should I think of the saying, somewhere that I had read:
“Pray for the one beloved, if he be living or dead,
In the hush of the Christmas midnight he will appear to thee.”
O Maggie, sister Maggie, down by the moaning sea! -

Still as a ghost in the moonlight; white as the drifted snow;
Cold as the pitiless waters, surging to and fro.
Why are your arms extended-what do your eyes behold?
O Maggie, sister Maggie, never your lips have told!

I do not like to speak it. You surely will understand.
She was always gentle and harmless; -nay, when the days are bland’
Quite happy, I think; but in winter, when winds and waves were high,
She would shudder at times, and utter a pitiful, moaning cry.

The chime of many bells upon the air
Calling to halls of prayer,
And, from the street,
A child’s laugh, shrill and sweet,
Break in upon my silence, and the thought
The day has brought.

Christ’s Day! The sacred morn
Whereon, long centuries past, the Lord was born.
With the deep-toning bells,
The organs’ sinks and swells,
The churches’ pageantry,
The song, the feasting and festivity-
How many think of Thee?
Of Thee, and this Thy day,
And all the solemn story which it tells?

Do I? I look within
On mine own sin;
I do not need to gaze without, to find
The mote that makes another’s vision blind,
Or seek along strange ways
For burdens that make weary all the days.
I know Whose willing breast
Would bear my load;
I know Whose clasp, most blest,
Would lead the feet that stumble on the road;
I know His sure abode, -
And hear, unceasingly,
The call, “Come unto me,
And I will give you rest! ”

We know . . . and answer not!
The fiercest fights are fought,
Not between nations, nor ‘twixt race and race,
But in the human soul’s still, secret space.
The pride that yields not unto foe or friend;
The stubborn will that breaks not, nor will bend;
The vengeful thought where falsehood’s cruel wrong
And serpent-fanged ingratitude have stung;
The base ambition that would self exalt,
Upon another’s effort; envy, strife,
The cowardice that dares not own the fault;
The vampire, hate that drains the veins of life, -
Of these the forces which the soul engage
To hold it from its holy heritage:
Of these the foes, whose multitudes appall,
That it must meet, to fell them or to fall.

How hard it seems! How simple it all is!
And oh, the priceless worth!
It reckons not of worldly power or pelf,
Nor of earth-praise the meed.
The all in all in this His simple creed:
“Love thou thy God; thy neighbor as thyself;
Forgive, as thou dost hope to be forgiven! ”
And lo! we have sweet Heaven
About us on earth.

It is Thy day, dear Lord,
Help me remember it.
Help me to live thy word,
So living, honor it.
Help me to thrust away
My cruel foes, to-day,
Forever and for aye.
It is Thy day, dear Lord,
It is Thy Day!

Commencement poem, written for the
University of California, June,1876.

“Into the balm of the clover,
Into the dawn and the dew,
Come, O my poet, my lover,
Single of spirit and true!

“ Sweeter the song of the throstle
Shall ring from its nest in the vine,
And the lark, my beloved apostle,
Shall chant thee a gospel divine.

“Ah! not to the dullard, the schemer,
I of my fullness may give,
But thou, whom the world calleth dreamer,
Drink of my fountains and live! ”

O, and golden in the sun did the river waters run,
O, and golden in its shinning all the mellow land-
scape lay;
And the poet’s simple rhyme blended softly with
the chime
Of the bells that rang the noontide, in the city,
far away.

And the gold and amethyst of the thin. Trans-
parent mist,
Lifted, drifted from the ocean to the far hori-
zon’s rim,
Where the white, transfigured ghost of some ves-
sel, long since lost,
Half in cloud and half in billow, trembled on
its utmost brim.

And I said, “Most beautiful, in the noontide
dream and lull,
Art thou, Nature, sweetest mother, in thy sum-
mer raiment drest;
Aye, in all thy moods and phases, lovingly I
name thy praises,
Yet through all my love and longing chafeth
still the old unrest.”

“Art thou a-worn and a-weary,
Sick with the doubts that perplex,
Come from thy wisdom most dreary,
Less fair than the faith which it wrecks.”

“Not in the tomes of the sages
Lieth the word to thy need;
Truer my blossomy pages,
Sweeter their lessons to read.”

“Aye, ” I said, “but con it duly, who may read
the lesson truly;
Who may grasp the mighty meaning, hidden
past our finding out?
From the weary search unsleeping, what is yielded
to our keeping?
All our knowledge, peradventure; all our wisdom
merely doubt!

“O my earth, to know thee fully! I that love
thee, singly, wholly!
In the beauty thou art veiled; in thy melody
art dumb.
Once, unto my perfect seeing give this mystery
of being;
Once, thy silence breaking, tell me, whither go
we? whence we come? ”

And I heard the rustling leaves, and the sheaves
against the sheaves
Clashing lightly, clashing brightly, as they rip-
ened in the sun;
And the gracious air astir with the insect hum
and whirr,
And the merry plash and ripple where the river
waters run:
Heard the anthem of the sea-that most mighty
melody-
Only these; yet something deeper than to own
my spirit willed.
Like a holy calm descending, with my inmost
being blending-
Like the “Peace” to troubled waters, that are
pacified and stilled.

And I said: “Ah, what are we? Children at the
Master’s knee-
Little higher than these grasses glancing upward
from the sods!
Just the few first pages turning in His mighty
book of learning-
We, mere atoms of beginning, that would wres-
tle with the gods! ”

“In the least one of my daisies
Deeper a meaning is set,
Than the seers ye crown with your praises,
Have wrung from the centuries yet.

“Leave them their doubt and derision;
Lo, to the knowledge I bring,
Clingeth no dimness of vision!
Come, O my chosen, my king!

“Out from the clouds that cover,
The night that would blind and betray,
Come, O my poet, my lover,
Into the golden day! ”

O, and deeper through the calm rolled the cease-
less ocean psalm;
O, and brighter in the sunshine all the meadows
stretched away;
And a little lark sang clear from the willow
branches near,
And the glory and the gladness closed about me
where I lay.

And I said: “Aye, verily, waiteth yet the mas-
ter key,
All these mysteries that shall open, though to
surer hand than mine;
All these doubts of our discerning, to the peace
of knowledge turning,
All our darkness, which is human, to the light,
Which is devine! ”

WRITTEN FOR THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC,
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, DECORATION DAY,1881

The sea-tides ebb and flow;
The seasons come and go,
Summer and sun succeed the cloud and snow,
And April rain awakes the violet.
Earth puts away
Her somber robes, and cheeks with tear-drops wet
In some sad yesterday
Dimple again with smiles, and half forget
Their grief, as the warm rose
Forgets the night-dews when the noontide glows.

Change follows upon change
Swift as the hours; and far away, and strange
As the dim memory of night’s troubled dream
In dawn’s returning beam,
Seem the dark, troubled years,
The sad, but glorious years,
Writ on the nation’s heart in blood and tears.

Ah, God! and yet we know
It was no dream in those days, long ago:
It was no dream, the beat
To arms, the steady tramp along the street
Of answering thousands, quick with word and deed
Unto their country’s need;
No dream the banners, flinging, fresh and fair
Their colors on the air-
Not stained and worn like these
Returning witnesses,
With sad, dumb lips, most eloquent of those
Returning nevermore!
Of those on many a hard-fought battlefield,
From hand to hand that bore
Their starry folds, and, knowing not to yield,
Fell, with a brave front steady to their foes.

Year after year the spring steals back again,
Bringing the bird and blossom in her train,
Beauty and melody,
But they return no more!
Borne on what tides of pain,
Over the unknown sea,
Unto the unknown shore:
Amid the pomp and show
Of glittering ranks, the cannon’s smoke and roar,
Tossed in the rock and reel
Of the wild waves of battle to and fro,
Amid the roll of drums, the ring of steel,
The clash of sabre, and the fiery hell
Of bursting shot and shell,
The scream of wounded steeds, the thunder tones
Of firm command, the prayers, the cheers, the groans, -
War’s mingled sounds of triumph and despair.
Blending with trumpet-blast and bugle-blare.

But not alone amid the battle wrack
They died, - our brave true men.
By southern glade and glen,
In dark morass, within whose pathless deeps,
The serpent coils and creeps,
They fell, with the fierce bloodhound on their track.
Amid the poisonous breath
Of crowded cells, and the rank, festering death
Of the dread prison-pen;
From dreary hospital,
And the dear, sheltering wall
Of home, that claimed them but to lose again,
They passed away, - the army of our slain!

O leader! Tried and true,
What words may speak of thee?
Last sacrifice divine,
Upon our country’s shrine!
O man, that toward above
Thy follow-men, with heart the tenderest,
And “whitest soul the nation ever knew! ”
Bravest and kingliest!
We lay our sorrow down
Before thee, as a crown;
We fold thee with our love
In silence: where are words to speak of thee?

For us the budded laughter of the May
Is beautiful to-day,
Upon the land, but nevermore for them,
Our heroes gone the rose upon its stem
Unfolds, or the fair lily blooms to bless
Their living eyes, with its pure loveliness;
No song-bird at the morn
Greets them with gladness of a day new-born;
No kiss of a child or wife
Warms their cold lips again to love and life,
Breaking sweet slumbers with as sweet release.
They may not wake again!
But from the precious soil,
Born of their toil-
Nursed with what crimson rain-
We pluck to-day the snow-white flower of peace.

He does not die, who in a noble cause
Renders his life: immortal as the laws
By which God rules the universe is he.
Silence his name may hold,
His fame untold
In all the annals of earth’s great may be,
But, bounded by no span
Of years which rounds the common lot of man,
Lo! he is one
Henceforward, with the work which he has done,
Whose meed and measure is Eternity.

They are not lost to us, they still are ours,
They do not rest. Cover their graves with flowers-
Earth’s fairest treasures, fashioned with skill,
Which makes the daisy’s disk a miracle
No less than man. On monument and urn,
Let their rich fragrance burn,
Like incense on a altar; softly spread
A royal mantle o’er each unmarked bed,
And, as a jeweled-rain,
Drop their bright petals for the nameless dead
And lonely, scattered wide
On plain and mountain-side,
Beneath the wave, and by the river-tide.
So let them rest
Upon their country’s breast.
They have not died in vain:
Through them she lives, with head no longer bowed
Among the nations, but erect and proud-
Washed clean of wrong and shame,
Her freedom never more an empty name,
Her all her scattered stars as one again.