Ina D. Coolbrith: Verses about Poetry

He walks with God upon the hills!
And sees, each morn, the world arise
New-bathed in light of paradise.
He hears the laughter of her rills,
Her melodies of many voices,
And greets her while his heart rejoices.
She, to his spirit undefiled,
Makes answer as a little child;
Unveiled before his eyes she stands,
And gives her secrets to his hands.

So glide the days, dear! Dawn will not delay,
Noontide will come, nor linger in its flight;
And even-time in turn must pass away
Into the darkness of a dreamless night.
Hold fast, Beloved, thy season of delight:
Make merry while the morning gilds the sky,
And dews undried upon the roses lie;
Thy golden morn of May-time, brief as bright.
For labor waits; and cares thou canst not miss;
Grief for thy gladness, and for laughter, tears.
Ah, love! if only love might spare thee this-
Might hold a little farther off the years! -
A little longer bind thy winged feet,
O youth, -most swift in passing, and most sweet!

Now the summer all is over!
We have wandered through the clover,
We have plucked in wood and lea
Blue-bell and anemone.

We ere children of the sun,
Very brown to look upon:
We were stained, hands and lips,
With the berries’ juicy tips.

And I think that we may know
Where the rankest nettles grow,
And where oak and ivy weave
Crimson glories to deceive.

Now the merry days are over!
Woodland-tenants seek their cover,
And the swallow leaves again
For his castle-nests in Spain.

Shut the door, and close the blind:
We shall have the bitter wind,
We shall have the dreary rain
Striving, driving at the pane.

Send the ruddy fire-light higher;
Draw your easy chair up nigher;
Through the winter, bleak and chill,
We may have our summer still.

Here are poems we may read,
Pleasant fancies to our need:
Ah, eternal summer-time,
Dwells within the poet’s rhyme!

All the birds’ sweet melodies
Linger in these songs of his;
And the blossoms of all ages
Waft their fragrance from his pages.

Now the Summer all is over!
We have wandered through the clover,
We Have plucked in wood and lea
Blue-bell and anemone.

We were children of the Sun,
Very brown to look upon;
We were stained, hands and lips,
With the berries’ juicy tips.

And I think that we may know
Where the rankest nettles grow,
And where oak and ivy weave
Crimson glories to deceive.

Now the merry days are over!
Woodland-tenants seek their cover,
And the swallow leaves again
For his castle-nests in Spain.

Shut the door, and close the blind:
We shall have the bitter wind,
We shall have the dreary rain
Striving, driving at the pane.

Send the ruddy fire-light higher;
Draw your easy chair up nigher;
Through the winter, bleak and chill,
We may have our summer still.

Here are poems we may read—
Pleasant fancies to our need.
Ah, eternal Summer-time,
Dwells within the Poet’s rhyme!

All the birds’sweet melodies
Linger in these songs of his;
And the blossoms of all ages
Waft their fragrance from his pages.

Weave me a rhyme to-day:
No pleasant roundelay.
But some vague, restless yearning of the heart
Shaped with but little art
To broken numbers, that shall glow
Most dreamily and slow.
I think no cherry fancy should belong
To this day’s song.

Look how the maple stands.
Waving its bleeding hands.
With such weird gestures; and the petals fall
From the dry roses-pale, nor longer sweet:
And by the garden-wall
The unclasped vines, and all
These sad dead leaves, a-rustle at our feet.

Dear bodies of the flowers,
From which the little fragrant souls are fled,
Beside you, lying dead,
We say, “Another summer shall be ours
When all these naked boughs shall flush and flame
With fresh, young blossoms.” Aye, but not the same!
And that is saddest. By the living bloom,
Who cares for last year’s beauty-in the tomb?

Spring, blossom, and decay.
Ah, poet, sing thy day-
So brief a day, alas! . . . .
Beloved, and shall we pass
Beneath the living grass,
Out from the glad, warm splendor of the sun?
A little dust about some old tree’s root,
With all our voices mute,
And all our singing done?

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.

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.