Ina D. Coolbrith: Verses about Silence

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Proverbs, XIII,12

Where is the perfect Vision
The years have watched to see?
Why do the footsteps falter
That should be swift to me?
Days, days, and days of waiting,
And days that linger still
Till the heart aches to be breaking-
And night is on the Hill.

Where, while I listen, listen
Thro hours that go and come
And silence unbroken,
The Voice that yet is dumb?
The one Voice that could bring me,
Triumphant, rapturous, clear-
O God! O God! - the message
My soul is sick to hear!

Bay and cypress bring we here
For a poet on his bier.

Laurel for the songs he sung,
Cypress for the harp unstrung’
Ere life’s deepest deep was stirred,
And the fullest chord was heard.

All to soon the music dumb,
All to soon the Silence come.

Yet among the crowned throng
In the realms of deathless song,
Through her late born minstrelsies,
Rings no truer tone than his.

In the land he loved so well
Green his memory will dwell
As the spring-sown leafage spread
O’er the hills he used to tread,
Watching, through the Golden Gate,
Golden sunsets lingering late.

Leave the world his name and fame, -
Ours is yet a dearer claim.

Leave the world the Poet’s art, -
Ours the soul’s diviner part:
All its treasures manifold,
All the Man’s unsullied gold,
We who knew him first and best,
Last will hold, and tenderest.

Bay and cypress leave we here,
Poet, -friend, -upon thy bier.

The summer-rose is dead;
The sad leaves, witherd,
Strew ankle-deep the pathways to our tread.
Dry grasses mat the plain,
And drifts of blossoms slain;
And day and night the wind is like a pain.

No nightingale to sing
In green boughs, listening,
Through balmy twilight hushes of the spring.
No thrush, no oriole
In music to out-roll
The little golden raptures of his soul.

O royal summer-reign!
When will you come again,
Bringing the happy birds across the main?
O blossoms! when renew
Your pretty garbs, and woo
Your waiting, wild-bee lovers back to you?

For lo, my heart is numb;
For lo, my heart is dumb—
Is silent till the birds and blossoms come!
A flower, that lieth cold
Under the wintry mold,
Waiting the warm spring-breathing to unfold.

O swallow! All too slow
Over the waves you go,
Dipping your light wings in their sparkling flow.
Over the Golden sea,
O swallow! flying free,
Fly swiftly with the summer back to me.

The summer rose is dead;
The sad leaves, withered,
Strew ankle-deep the pathways to our tread:
Dry grasses mat the plain,
And drifts of blossom slain;
And day and night the wind is like a pain.

No nightingale to sing
In green boughs listening,
Through balmy twilight hushes of the spring:
No thrush, no oriole
In music to out-roll
The little golden raptures of his soul.

O royal summer-reign!
When will you come again,
Bringing the happy birds across the main?
O blossoms! when renew
Your pretty garbs, and woo
Your waiting, wild bee lovers back to you?

For lo, my heart is numb;
For lo, my heart is dumb,
Is silent till the birds and the blossoms come!
A flower, that lieth cold
Under the wintry mold,
Waiting the warm spring-breathing to unfold.

O swallow! all too slow
Over the waves you go,
Dipping your light wings in their sparkling flow.
Over the golden sea,
O swallow, flying free,
Fly swiftly with the summer back to me!

Youth that is sweetest lies chill, lies still in death:
Close and clear eyelids upon the tender eyes;
And hush the pleadings on murmur answereth,
And still the kisses that wake no warm replies.

White-limbed he lieth, dead youth-so strong, so fair:
And O, for the slumber that woke to happy days!
And O, the moonlights-O, golden dreams that were!
And O, the glory of live’s long, pleasant ways!

Fair were the faces his eyes have looked upon;
But these are haggard, and wan, and very sad, \.
Sweet the love-laughters, and red lips he won;
But here is silence of lips no longer glad.

So, part the branches, where light falls long between,
And plait the grasses about his feet and head;
Here his loved summer shall wear her softest green,
And winds just ruffle the fringes of his bed.

His were the roses washed sweeter in the dew,
And his the rapture life knoweth not again;
But ours the tempest, the skies no longer blue,
For tender sunlight, and tender, falling rain.

The strongholds these of those strange, mighty gods
Who walked the earth before man’s feeble race,
And, passing hence to their unknown abodes
In further worlds, left here there awful trace.
Turrets, and battlements, and toppling towers.
That spurn the torrent foaming at their base,
And pierce the clouds, uplifting into space.
No sound is here, save where the river pours
Its ice-born flood, or when the tempests sweep
In rush of battle, and lightnings leap
In thunder to the cliffs; no wing outspread
Above these walls, lone and untenanted
By man or beast, -but where the eagle soars
Above the crags, - and by the gates they guard,
Huge, and as motionless, on either hand,
The rock-hewn sentinels in silence stand,
Through the long centuries keeping watch and ward.
Up from the sheer abysses that we tread,
Wherein pale shadow holds her mystic sway,
And night yields never wholly to the day,
To where, in narrowing light far overhead,
Arch capping arch and peak to peak is wed,
We gaze, and veil our eyes in silent awe,
As when Jehovah’s form the prophet saw.

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.

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.

Was it the sigh and shiver of the leaves?
Was it the murmer of the meadow brook,
That in and out the reeds and water weeds
Slipped silverly, and on their tremulous keys
Uttered her many melodies? Or voice
Of the far sea, red with the sunset gold,
That sang within her shining shores, and sang
Within the gate, that in the sunset shone
A gate of fire against the outer world?

For, ever as I turned the magic page
Of that old song the old, blind singer sang
Unto the world, when it and song were young—
The ripple of the reeds, or odorous,
Soft sigh of leaves, or voice of the far sea-
A mystical, low murmur, tremulous
Upon the wind, came in with musk of rose,
The salt breath of the waves, and far, faint smell
Of laurel up the slopes of Tamalpais....

“Am I less fair, am I less fair than these,
Daughters of far-off seas?

Daughters of far-off shores, - bleak, over-blown
With foam of fretful tides, with wail and moan
Of waves, that toss wild hands, that clasp and beat
Wild, desolate hands above the lonely sands,
Printed no more with pressure of their feet:
That chase no more the light feet flying swift
Up golden sands, nor lift
Foam fingers white unto their garment hem,
And flowing hair of them.

“For these are dead: the fair, great queens are dead!
The long hair’s gold a dust the wind bloweth
Wherever it may list;
The curved lips, that kissed
Heroes and kings of men, a dust that breath,
Nor speech, nor laughter, ever guickeneth;
And all the glory sped
From the large, marvelous eyes, the light whereof
Wrought wonder in their hearts, - desire, and love!
And wrought not any good:
But strife, and curses of the gods, and flood,
And fire and battle-death!
Am I less fair, less fair,
Because that my hands bear
Neither a sword, nor any flaming brand,
To blacken and make desolate my land,
But on my brows are leaves of olive boughs,
And in mine arms a dove!

“Sea-born and goddess, blossom of the foam
Pale Aphrodite, shadowy as a mist
Not any sun hath kissed!
Tawny of limb I roam,
The dusks of forests dark within my hair;
The far Yosemite,
For garment and for covering me,
Wove the white foam and mist,
The amber and the rose and amethyst
Of her wild fountains, shaken loose in air.
And I am of the hills and of the sea:
Strong with the strength of my great hills, and calm
With calm of the fair sea, whose billowy gold
Girdles the land whose queen and love I am!
Lo! Am I less than thou,
That with a sound of lyres, and harp-playing,
Not any voice doth sing
The beauty of mine eyelids and my brow?
Nor hymn in all my fair and gracious ways,
And lengths of golden days,
The measure and the music of my praise?

“Ah, what indeed is this
Old land beyond the seas, that ye should miss
For her the grace and majesty of mine?
Are not the fruits and vine
Fair on my hills, and in my vales the roses?
The palm-tree and the pine
Strike hands together under the same skies
In every wind that blows.
What clearer heavens can shine
Above the land whereon the shadow lies
Of her dead glory, and her slaughtered kings,

And lost, evanished gods?
Upon my fresh green sods
No king has walked to curse and desolate:
But in the valleys Freedom sits and sings,
And on ths heights above;
Upon her brows the leaves of olive boughs,
And in her arms a dove;
And the great hills are pure, undesecrate,
White with their snows untrod,
And mighty with the presence of their God!

“Harken, how many years
I sat alone, I sat alone and heard
Only the silence stirred
By wind and leaf, by clash of grassy spears,
And singing bird that called to singing bird.
Heard but the savage tongue
Of my brown savage children, that among
The hills and valleys chased the buck and doe,
And round the wigwam fires
Chanted wild songs of their wild savage sires,
And danced their wild, weird dances to and fro,
And wrought their beaded robes of buffalo.
Day following upon day,
Saw but the panther crouched upon the limb,
Smooth serpents, swift and slim,
Slip through the reeds and grasses, and the bear
Crush through his tangled lair
Of chapparal, upon the startled prey!

“Listen, how I have seen
Flash of strange fires in gorge and black ravine;
Heard the sharp clang of steel, that came to drain
The mountain’s golden vein-
And laughed and sang, and sang and laughed again,
Because that ‘now, ’ I said, ‘I shall be known!
I shall not set alone;
But reach my hands unto my sister lands!
And they? Will they not turn
Old, wondering dim eyes to me, and yearn-
Aye, they will yearn, in sooth,
To my glad beauty, and my glad fresh youth! ’

“What matters though the morn
Redden upon my singing fields of corn!
What matters though the wind’s unresting feet
Ripple the vales run with wine,
Ang on these hills of mine
The orchard boughs droop heavy with ripe fruit?
When with nor sound of lute
Nor lyre, doth any singer chant and sing
Me, in my life’s fair spring:
The matin song of me in my young day?
But all my lays and mountain to the farther hem
Of sea, and there be none to gather them.

“Lo! I have waited long!
How longer yet must my strung harp be dumb,
Ere its great master come?
Till the fair singer comes to wake the strong,
Rapt chords of it unto the new, glad song!


Him a diviner speech
My song-birds wait to teach:
The secrets of the field
My blossoms will not yeld
To other hands than his;
And, lingering for this,
My Laurels lend the glory of their boughs
To crown no narrower brows.
For on his lips must wisdom sit with youth,
And in his eyes, and on his lids thereof,
The light of a great love-
And on his forehead, truth! ”...

Was in the wind, or the soft sigh of leaves,
Or sound of singing waters? Lo, I looked,
And saw the silvery ripples of the brook,
The fruit upon the hills, the waving trees,
And mellow fields of harvest; saw the Gate
Burn in the sunset; the thin thread of mist
Creep white across the Saucelito hills;
Till the day darkened down the ocean rim,
The sunset purple slipped from Tamalpais,
And bay and sky were bright with sudden stars.