Susan Coolidge

The drowsy summer in the flowering limes
Had laid her down at ease,
Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes
Summoned the wandering bees
To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival
Within that vast and fragrant banquet-hall.

She stood, my Mary, on the wall below,
Poised on light, arching feet,
And drew the long, green branches down to show
Where hung, mid odors sweet,--
A tiny miracle to touch and view,--
The humming-bird's, small nest and pearls of blue.

Fair as the summer's self she stood, and smiled,
With eyes like summer sky,
Wistful and glad, half-matron and half-child,
Gentle and proud and shy;
Her sweet head framed against the blossoming bough,
She stood a moment,--and she stands there now!

'Tis sixteen years sin...

New flowery scents strewed everywhere,
New sunshine poured in largesse fair,
"We shall be happy now," we say.
A voice just trembles through the air,
And whispers, "May."

Nay, but we MUST! No tiny bud
But thrills with rapture at the flood
Of fresh young life which stirs to-day.
The same wild thrill irradiates our blood;
Why hint of "May"?

For us are coming fast and soon
The delicate witcheries of June;
July, with ankles deep in hay;
The bounteous Autumn. Like a mocking tune
Again sounds, "May."

Spring's last-born darling, clear-eyed, sweet,
Pauses a moment, with white twinkling feet,
And golden locks in breezy play,
Half teasing and half tender, to repeat
Her song of "May."

Ah, month of hope! all promised glee,
A...

All green and fair the Summer lies,
Just budded from the bud of Spring,
With tender blue of wistful skies,
And winds which softly sing.

Her clock has struck its morning hours;
Noon nears--the flowery dial is true;
But still the hot sun veils its powers,
In deference to the dew.

Yet there amid the fresh new green,
Amid the young broods overhead,
A single scarlet branch is seen,
Swung like a banner red;

Tinged with the fatal hectic flush
Which, when October frost is in the near,
Flames on each dying tree and bush,
To deck the dying year.

And now the sky seems not so blue,
The yellow sunshine pales its ray,
A sorrowful, prophetic hue
Lies on the radiant day,

As mid the bloom and tenderness
I catch that scarle...

O word and thing most beautiful!
Our yesterday was cold and dull,
Gray mists obscured the setting sun,
Its evening wept with sobbing rain;
But to and fro, mid shrouding night,
Some healing angel swift has run,
And all is fresh and fair again.

O, word and thing most beautiful!
The hearts, which were of cares so full,
The tired hands, the tired feet,
So glad of night, are glad of morn,--
Where are the clouds of yesterday?
The world is good, the world is sweet,
And life is new and hope re-born.

O, word and thing most beautiful!
O coward soul and sorrowful,
Which sighs to note the ebbing light
Give place to evening's shadowy gray!
What are these things but parables,--
That darkness heals the wrongs of day,
And dawning clears all mis...

Who is this who gently slips
Through my door, and stands and sighs,
Hovering in a soft eclipse,
With a finger on her lips
And a meaning in her eyes?

Once she came to visit me
In white robes with festal airs,
Glad surprises, songs of glee;
Now in silence cometh she,
And a sombre garb she wears.

Once I waited and was tired,
Chid her visits as too few;
Crownless now and undesired,
She to seek me is inspired
Oftener than she used to do.

Grave her coming is and still,
Sober her appealing mien,
Tender thoughts her glances fill;
But I shudder, as one will
When an open grave is seen.

Wherefore, friend,--for friend thou art,--
Should I wrong thee thus and grieve?
Wherefore push thee from my heart?
Of my morning...

I know where it lurks and hides,
In the midst of the busy house,
In the midst of the children's glee,
All clay its shadow bides:
Nobody knows but me.

On a closet-shelf it dwells,
In the darkest corner of all,
Mid rolls of woollen and fur,
And faint, forgotten smells
Of last year's lavender.

That a ghost has its dwelling there
Nobody else would guess,--
"Only a baby's shoe,
A curl of golden hair,"
You would say, "a toy or two,--

"A broken doll, whose lips
And cheeks of waxen bloom
Show dents of fingers small,--
Little, fair finger-tips,--
A worn sash,--that is all."

Little to see or to guess;
But whenever I open the door,
There, faithful to its post,
With its eyes' sad tenderness,
I see my little g...

Yes, God has made me a woman,
And I am content to be
Just what He meant, not reaching out
For other things, since He
Who knows me best and loves me most has ordered this for me.

A woman, to live my life out
In quiet womanly ways,
Hearing the far-off battle,
Seeing as through a haze
The crowding, struggling world of men fight through their busy days.

I am not strong or valiant,
I would not join the fight
Or jostle with crowds in the highways
To sully my garments white;
But I have rights as a woman, and here I claim my right.

The right of a rose to bloom
In its own sweet, separate way,
With none to question the perfumed pink
And none to utter a nay
If it reaches a root or points, a thorn, as even a rose-tree may.

The r...

As purely white as is the drifted snow,
More dazzling fair than summer roses are,
Petalled with rays like a clear rounded star,
When winds pipe chilly, and red sunsets glow,
Your blossoms blow.

Sweet with a freshening fragrance, all their own,
In which a faint, dim breath of bitter lies,
Like wholesome breath mid honeyed flatteries;
When other blooms are dead, and birds have flown,
You stand alone.

Fronting the winter with a fearless grace,
Flavoring the odorless gray autumn chill,
Nipped by the furtive frosts, but cheery still,
Lifting to heaven from the bare garden place
A smiling face.

Roses are fair, but frail, and soon grow faint,
Nor can endure a hardness; violets blue,
Short-lived and sweet, live but a day or two;
The nun-lik...

Dry leaves upon the wall,
Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape,
A single frosted cluster on the grape
Still hangs--and that is all.

It hangs forgotten quite,--
Forgotten in the purple vintage-day,
Left for the sharp and cruel frosts to slay,
The daggers of the night.

It knew the thrill of spring;
It had its blossom-time, its perfumed noons;
Its pale-green spheres were rounded to soft runes
Of summer's whispering.

Through balmy morns of May;
Through fragrances of June and bright July,
And August, hot and still, it hung on high
And purpled day by day.

Of fair and mantling shapes,
No braver, fairer cluster on the tree;
And what then is this thing has come to thee
Among the other grapes,

Thou lonely tenan...

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.

The punctual tide draws up the bay,
With ripple of wave and hiss of spray,
And the great red flower of the light-house tower
Blooms on the headland far away.

Petal by petal its fiery rose
Out of the darkness buds and grows;
A dazzling shape on the dim, far cape,
A beckoning shape as it comes and goes.

A moment of bloom, and then it dies
On the windy cliff 'twixt the sea and skies.
The fog laughs low to see it go,
And the white waves watch it with cruel eyes.

Then suddenly out of the mist-cloud dun,
As touched and wooed by unseen sun,
Again into sight bursts the rose of light
And opens its petals one by one.

Ah, the storm may be wild and the sea be strong,
And man is weak and the darkness long,
But while blossoms the flower on ...

A grievous day of wrathful winds,
Of low-hung clouds, which scud and fly,
And drop cold rains, then lift and show
A sullen realm of upper sky.

The sea is black as night; it roars
From lips afoam with cruel spray,
Like some fierce, many-throated pack
Of wolves, which scents and chases prey.

Crouched in my little wind-swept nook,
I hear the menacing voices call,
And shudder, as above the deck
Topples and swings the weltering wall.

It seems a vast and restless grave,
Insatiate, hungry, beckoning
With dreadful gesture of command
To every free and living thing.

"O Lord," I cry, "Thou makest life
And hope and all sweet things to be;
Rebuke this hovering, following Death,--
This horror never born of Thee."

A sudden gl...

"Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter, passing by, might overshadow some of them."


Mid the thronged bustle of the city street,
In the hot hush of noon,
I wait, with folded hands and nerveless feet.
Surely He will come soon.
Surely the Healer will not pass me by,
But listen to my cry.

Long are the hours in which I lie and wait,
Heavy the load I bear;
But He will come ere evening. Soon or late
I shall behold Him there;
Shall hear His dear voice, all the clangor through;
"What wilt thou that I do?"

"If Thou but wilt, Lord, Thou canst make me clean."
Thus shall I answer swift.
And He will touch me, as He walks serene;
And I shall rise and lift

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.

After the earthquake shock or lightning dart
Comes a recoil of silence o'er the lands,
And then, with pulses hot and quivering hands,
Earth calls up courage to her mighty heart,
Plies every tender, compensating art,
Draws her green, flowery veil above the scar,
Fills the shrunk hollow, smooths the riven plain,
And with a century's tendance heals again
The seams and gashes which her fairness mar.
So we, when sudden woe like lightning sped,
Finds us and smites us in our guarded place,
After one brief, bewildered moment's space,
By the same heavenly instinct taught and led,
Adjust our lives to loss, make friends with pain,
Bind all our shattered hopes and bid them bloom again.

Myriad rivers seek the sea,
The sea rejects not any one;
A myriad rays of light may be
Clasped in the compass of one sun;
And myriad grasses, wild and free,
Drink of the dew which faileth none.

A myriad worlds encompass ours;
A myriad souls our souls enclose;
And each, its sins and woes and powers,
The Lord He sees, the Lord He knows,
And from the Infinite Knowledge flowers
The Infinite Pity's fadeless rose.

Lighten our darkness, Lord, most wise;
All-seeing One, give us to see;
Our judgments are profanities,
Our ignorance is cruelty,
While Thou, knowing all, dost not despise
To pardon even such things as we.

In the long, bright summer, dear to bird and bee,
When the woods are standing in liveries green and gay,
Merry little voices sound from every tree,
And they whisper secrets all the day.

If we knew the language, we should hear strange things;
Mrs. Chirry, Mrs. Flurry, deep in private chat.
"How are all your nestlings, dear? Do they use their wings?
What was that sad tale about a cat?"

"Where is your new cottage?" "Hush! I pray you, hush".
Please speak very softly, dear, and make no noise.
It is on the lowest bough of the lilac bush.
And I am so dreadfully afraid of boys.

"Mr. Chirry chose the spot, without consulting me;
Such a very public place, and insecure for it,
I can scarcely sleep at night for nervousness; but he
Says I am a silly thing and ...

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...