Susan Coolidge - Verses

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.

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.

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 for me.

I used to do so many things,—
Love thee and chide thee and caress;
Brush little straws from off thy way,
Tempering with my poor tenderness
The heat of thy short day.

Not much, but very sweet to give;
And it is grief of griefs to bear
That all these ministries are o'er,
And thou, so happy, Love, elsewhere,
Never can need me more:—

And I can do for thee but this
(Working on blindly, knowing not
If I may give thee pleasure so):
Out of my own dull, burdened lot
I can arise, and go

To sadder lives and darker homes,
A messenger, dear heart, from thee
Who wast on earth a comforter,
And say to those who welcome me,
I am sent forth by her.

Feeling the while how good it is
To do thy errands thus, and think
It may be, in the blue, far space,
Thou watchest from the heaven's brink,—
A smile upon my face.

And when the day's work ends with day,
And star-eyed evening, stealing in,
Waves a cool hand to flying noon,
And restless, surging thoughts begin,
Like sad bells out of tune,

I'll pray: "Dear Lord, to whose great love
Nor bound nor limit line is set,
Give to my darling, I implore,
Some new sweet joy not tasted yet,
For I can give no more."

And with the words my thoughts shall climb
With following feet the heavenly stair
Up which thy steps so lately sped,
And, seeing thee so happy there,
Come back half comforted.

A little, rudely sculptured bed,
With shadowing folds of marble lace,
And quilt of marble, primly spread
And folded round a baby's face.

Smoothly the mimic coverlet,
With royal blazonries bedight,
Hangs, as by tender fingers set
And straightened for the last good-night.

And traced upon the pillowing stone
A dent is seen, as if to bless
The quiet sleep some grieving one
Had leaned, and left a soft impress.

It seems no more than yesterday
Since the sad mother down the stair
And down the long aisle stole away,
And left her darling sleeping there.

But dust upon the cradle lies,
And those who prized the baby so,
And laid her down to rest with sighs,
Were turned to dust long years ago.

Above the peaceful pillowed head
Three centuries brood, and strangers peep
And wonder at the carven bed,—
But not unwept the baby's sleep,

For wistful mother-eyes are blurred
With sudden mists, as lingerers stay,
And the old dusts are roused and stirred
By the warm tear-drops of to-day.

Soft, furtive hands caress the stone,
And hearts, o'erleaping place and age,
Melt into memories, and own
A thrill of common parentage.

Men die, but sorrow never dies;
The crowding years divide in vain,
And the wide world is knit with ties
Of common brotherhood in pain;

Of common share in grief and loss,
And heritage in the immortal bloom
Of Love, which, flowering round its cross,
Made beautiful a baby's tomb.

Love me for what I am, Love. Not for sake
Of some imagined thing which I might be,
Some brightness or some goodness not in me,
Born of your hope, as dawn to eyes that wake
Imagined morns before the morning break.
If I, to please you (whom I fain would please),
Reset myself like new key to old tune,
Chained thought, remodelled action, very soon
My hand would slip from yours, and by degrees
The loving, faulty friend, so close to-day,
Would vanish, and another take her place,—
A stranger with a stranger's scrutinies,
A new regard, an unfamiliar face.
Love me for what I am, then, if you may;
But, if you cannot,—love me either way.

All sweet and various things do lend themselves
And blend and intermix in her rare soul,
As chorded notes, which were untuneful else,
Clasp each the other in a perfect whole.

Within her spirit, dawn, all dewy-pearled,
Seems held and folded in by golden noons,
While past the sunshine gleams a further world
Of deep star-spaces and mysterious moons.

Like widths of blowing ocean wet with spray,
Like breath of early blooms at morning caught,
Like cool airs on the cheek of heated day,
Come the fair emanations of her thought.