Benedicam Domino.

Thank God for life: life is not sweet always.
Hands may he heavy-laden, hearts care full,
Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days,
And dreams divine end in awakenings dull.
Still it is life, anil life is cause for praise.
This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting,
Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing,
Prove me of Him who is of life the Spring.
I am alive!--and that is beautiful.

Thank God for Love: though Love may hurt and wound
Though set with sharpest thorns its rose may be,
Roses are not of winter, all attuned
Must be the earth, full of soft stir, and free
And warm ere dawns the rose upon its tree.
Fresh currents through my frozen pulses run;
My heart has tasted summer, tasted sun,
And I can thank Thee, Lord, although not one
Of all the many roses blooms for me.

Susan Coolidge

No biography available

Susan Coolidge

Menace.

Susan Coolidge, Simple Poetry

Una.

Susan Coolidge, Simple Poetry

Two Ways To Love.

Susan Coolidge, Simple Poetry

Ebb And Flow.

Susan Coolidge, Simple Poetry

English

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Solstice.

I.

I sit at evening's scented close,
In fulness of the summer-tide;
All dewy fair the lily glows,
No single petal of the row;
Has fallen to dim the rose's pride.

Sweet airs, sweet harmonies of hue,
Surround, caress me everywhere;
The spells of dusk, the spells of dew,
My senses steal, my reason woo,
And sing a lullaby to tare,

But vainly do the warm airs sing,
All vain the roses' rapturous breath;
A chill blast, as from wintry wing,
Smites on my heart, and, shuddering,
I see the beauty changed to death.

Afar I see it loom and rise,
That pitiless and icy shape.
It blots the blue, it dims the skies;
Amid the summer land it cries,
"I come, and there is no escape!"

O, bitter drop in bloom and sweet!
O, ca...

Susan Coolidge

A Little Te Deum Of The Commonplace. A Fragment

With hearts responsive
And enfranchised eyes,
We thank Thee, Lord,--
For all things beautiful, and good, and true;
For things that seemed not good yet turned to good;
For all the sweet compulsions of Thy will
That chased, and tried, and wrought us to Thy shape;
For things unnumbered that we take of right,
And value first when first they are withheld;
For light and air; sweet sense of sound and smell;
For ears to hear the heavenly harmonies;
For eyes to see the unseen in the seen;
For vision of The Worker in the work;
For hearts to apprehend Thee everywhere;
        We thank Thee, Lord!

For all the wonders of this wondrous world;--
The pure pearl splendours of the coming day,
The breaking east,--the rosy flush,--the Dawn,--
For tha...

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To J. H. And E. W. H.

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 ...

Susan Coolidge

Commissioned.

"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 m...

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Thank God For Life

Thank God for life, in such an age as this,
    Rich with the promises of better things.
Thank God for being part of this great nation's heart,
    Whose strong pulsations are not ruled by kings.

Our thanks for fearless and protesting speech
    When cloven hoofs show 'neath the robes of state.
For us no servile song of 'Kings can do no wrong.'
    Not royal birth, but worth, makes rulers great.

Thank God for peace within our border lands,
    And for the love of peace within each soul.
Who thinks on peace has wrought, mosaic-squares of thought
    In the foundation of our future goal.

Our thanks for love, and knowledge of love's laws.
    Love is a greater power than vested might.
Love is the central source of all enduring force.
    Love is the ...

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Marianna Alcoforando

The sparrows wake beneath the convent eaves;
I think I have not slept the whole night through.
But I am old; the aged scarcely know
The times they wake and sleep, for life burns down;
They breathe the calm of death before they die.
The long night ends, the day comes creeping in,
Showing the sorrows that the darkness hid,
The bended head of Christ, the blood, the thorns,
The wall's gray stains of damp, the pallet bed
Where little Sister Marta dreams of saints,
Waking with arms outstretched imploringly
That seek to stay a vision's vanishing.
I never had a vision, yet for me
Our Lady smiled while all the convent slept
One winter midnight hushed around with snow,
I thought she might be kinder than the rest,
And so I came to kneel before her feet,
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