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.

"Do their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and life of it."ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY

  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.