Susan Coolidge - Last Verses

Thy grave mound is a shrinèd place,
Where pilgrim hearts may go,
With loving thoughts and thankful prayers,
Soft passing to and fro.
Seldom with word the air is stirred,
Seldom with sob or sigh;
All silently and ceaselessly
The march of hearts goes by.

Now half our lives seems lived on earth,
And half in heaven with thee.
Our heart-beats measure out the road
To where we fain would be, —
Beyond this strife of mortal life,
This lonely ache and pain,
Where we who miss and mourn thee so
May find thee once again.

HOT on the pavement burns the summer sun,
In the deep shadow of the ilex tree
The Master rests, while gathering one by one
The neighbors enter, crowding silently
To hear His words, which drop like honey-dew;
I may not hear, there is too much to do.

How can I pause? I seem the only one
To take a thought about this multitude
Who, the day past and all the preaching done,
Will need to be refreshed with wine and food;
We cannot send the people home unfed —
What words were those? “I am the living bread.”

There is my sister sitting the day long
Close to His side, serene and free from care,
Helping me not; and surely it is wrong
To leave to me the task that she should share.
Master, rebuke her, just and true Thou art —
What do I hear? “She hath the better part.”

If all chose thus then all would go unfed —
Souls hunger, yes! but bodies have their need.
Some one must grind and mix the daily bread,
Some one wake early that the rest may feed,
Some one bear burdens, face the summer sun —
But must I always, always be the one?

“Cumbered with serving,” thus the Master spake;
But ’twas to serve Him that I worked so hard
(And I would serve the year long for His sake).
I dare not take the rest which is reward
Lest He should suffer while I stay my hand.
How hard it is, how hard to understand!

What does a voice say? “He whose power divine
Could feed the thousands on the mountain side
Needeth no fretting, puny aid like thine.
One thing is needful, trust him to provide;
The Heavenly Chance comes once nor tarries long” —
Master, forgive me, teach me, I was wrong!

IN the quaint Norman city, far apart,
A width of humming distance set between,
They rest who once lived closely heart to heart,
William the conquering Duke and his fair Queen.

Too near of kin to wed, the Church averred,
And barred the way which joy was fain to tread;
But hearts spoke louder than the priestly word,
And youth and love o’erleaped the barrier dread.

No will of wax had England’s future King;
With iron hand he brushed the curse aside,
As ’twere a slight and disregarded thing,
And asking leave of no man, claimed his bride.

And they were happy, spite of ban and blame,
Rich in renown, estate, in valiant deed;
And the sweet Duchess at her broidery frame
Wrought her lord’s victories for all men to read.

But as the years of wedlock ebbed and flowed,
And still the Church averted her stern face,
The royal pair grew weary of the load
Of unrepented sin and long disgrace,

And bought a peace from late relenting Rome.
Two stately abbeys built they, and endowed,
With carven pinnacle and tower and dome,
And soaring spire and bell-chimes pealing loud.

Within the crypt of one they buried her,
True wife and queen, when her time came to die;
And when strong death conquered the Conqueror,
He slept beneath the other’s altar high.

Was it of love’s devising that to-day,
With all the wide-grown city space to bar,
Across the roofs and towers from far away
St. Etienne looks upon La Trinita?

Was it some subtle prescience of the heart,
Which laid on time and change resistless spell,
Forbidding both to hide or hold apart
The resting-place of those who loved so well?

For still defying distance, day and night
The spires like beckoning fingers seem to rise,
The bells to call, as perished voices might,
“Love is not dead, Beloved; love never dies!”

JACOB BOEHME, Sage and Mystic, wert thou right or wert thou wrong,
In believing and upholding that all human souls belong
To some elemental structure, be they weak or be they strong?

That each separate spirit made is of one element, and shows,
By its power or by its weakness, its unrest or its repose,
Whether earth, air, fire, or water is the Source from which it flows?

’Tis a difficult conclusion; but, as in the jewel’s blue,
Red and rose and green and amber flash and leap and sparkle through,
Through your speculative fancy seems to scintillate the true.

For the variance of the creature whom we call our fellow-man,
Framed alike in needs and passions, on the self-same human plan,
Grows more wide, more past believing, as we study it and scan.

Ah, the temperaments, the fateful, how they front us and surprise,
Looking with bewildering distance out of wistful, alien eyes,
Never drawing any nearer, or to hate or sympathize.

Eager, dominant, all unresting are the spirits born of Fire,
Burning with a fitful fever, ever reaching high and higher,
Shrivelling weaker wills before them in the heat of their desire.

Cool, elusive, fluctuating, hard to fix and strangely fair
Are the difficult, grievous, grieving souls which born of Water are —
Ours to-day, not ours to-morrow; never ours to hold and wear.

Vainly love and passion battle ’gainst their unresisting chill,
Like the oar-stroke in the water which the drops make haste to fill,
The impression melts and wavers, the cool surface fronts us still.

But the souls of Air! ah, sweetest, rarest of the human kind,
They the poets are, the singers, making music for the mind,
Lifting up the weight of living like a fresh and rushing wind.

And the souls of Earth, dear, steadfast, firm of root and sure of stay,
Not disdaining commonplaces, not afraid of every day,
Taking from the air and water and the sunshine what they may.

Theirs the dower of happy giving, theirs the heritage of Fate
Which, when faith has grown to fulness, and the little is made great,
Brings to love its true rewarding, harvested or soon or late.

Jacob Boehme, by-gone mystic, gifted with a strange insight,
As I read your yellowed pages, which in former times were white,
And review my men and women, half I deem that you were right.

’TIS said when pious Moslem walk abroad,
If on the path they spy a floating bit
Of paper, reverently they turn aside
And shun the scrap, nor set a foot on it,
Lest haply thereupon the awful name
Of mighty Allah should by chance be writ.