Florence Earle Coates

“ Each knows the soul of Music—full without him—
⁠Could bear no more, and rivalry were vain.
So, Daphnis singing in the tamarisk shade,
All things grew silent, of a sound afraid.
The aspens by the lake have ceased to shiver,
⁠As if the very zephyrs held their breath:
Hearken how, wave on wave, with notes that quiver,
⁠It rises now—that song of life and death!—
"O holy! holy!" Was it Heaven that called
My spirit, by love's ecstasy enthralled? ”

“ Yet in the Prison House of Pain things full of beauty blow,—
⁠Like Christmas-roses, which attain
Perfection 'mid the snow,—
Love, entering, in his mild warmth the darkest shadows melt,
And often, where the hush is deep, the waft of wings is felt.
Ah, me! the Prison House of Pain!—what lessons there are bought!—
⁠Lessons of a sublimer strain
Than any elsewhere taught,—
Amid its loneliness and gloom, grave meanings grow more clear,
For to no earthly dwelling-place seems God so strangely near! ”

“ To overthrow a cause for which I would have died.
The sun may shine with naught to shroud
⁠⁠Its beam, yet show less bright
Than when from out eclipsing cloud
⁠⁠It pours its radiant light;
And Lincoln, seen amid the shows of war
Clothed in his sober black, was somehow felt the more
To be a centre and a soul of power,—
⁠⁠An influence benign
To kindle in a faithless hour
⁠⁠New trust in the divine.
Grave was his visage, but no cloud could dull
The radiance from within that made it beautiful. ”

“ WHERE hast thou gone, my Day?
⁠I meant to follow,
Extracting from thine every hour its sweet;
⁠But thou, beguiling hope with pledges hollow,
Art flown on wingèd feet.
Hardly I greet thy morn,
⁠The glory dwindles;
And as I plan thy moments with delight,
⁠The evening-primrose in my pathway kindles
Her taper for the night.
Ah, too precipitate!
⁠Might I not linger
To gather a stray blossom by the way,
⁠But pointing onward with thy warning finger,
Thou must outstrip me, Day? ”

“ And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection,—to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side? ”

“ GREAT-HEARTED son of the Titan mother, Earth,
⁠Fed at her breast,
He builded upward from the solid ground,
While listening ever for the heavenly sound
⁠Of higher voices, to his soul addressed.
The elemental mother, lending might
⁠With vital breath,
Made him, with her instinctive courage, brave;
And the immortals to his spirit gave
⁠Their deeper knowledge and their scorn of death.
So evermore with energy and joy,
⁠He followed Truth:
Still for the message and the vision sought,
Still to the temple of her worship brought
⁠The imagination of unaging youth ”

“ My brother's face is turned from me;
He sees a thing I must not see,—
Alas! what may the vision be?
His form is wasted as with pain;
A fever feeds upon his brain
Whose fire, extinguished, burns again. ”

“ The past and future so uniting
⁠That Death itself may not them sunder!—
⁠⁠Know you its name?
Back of the centuries its birth-hour lonely
⁠⁠Men vainly seek:
Of its beginnings legend only
⁠⁠And myth may speak:
Ere Greece of beauty dreamed, or Rome of power,
In some mysterious, unrecorded hour,
Darkling from hushed obscurity it sprung
When the Nile gods and the Vedas yet were young. ”

“ There's not a bird in all the boughs but's eager now to sing,
⁠And from afar a ship is sailing home!
The cherry-blooms, all lightly blown about the verdant sward,
⁠With silver fleck the dandelion's gold;
The jasmine and arbutus breathe the fragrance they have stored;
⁠The crumpled ferns, like faery tents, unfold.
And low the rills are laughing, and the rivers in the sun
⁠Are gliding on, impatient for the sea;
The wintry days are past and gone, the summer is begun,
⁠And love from far is sailing home to me! ”

“ Who fill our hearts with hope and glad forgiving;
Who mid the battle's deaf'ning roar,
⁠When fell the ranks like autumn leaves,
⁠Guarded the standard of the free,
⁠The ægis of our victory;
Who, fevered and anhungered, bore
The more appalling tests of tragic War,
⁠And laureate return, and bring to us their sheaves!
⁠Warriors of the land
⁠And warriors of the sea,
⁠Bold to meet adversity
⁠And constant to withstand;
Heroes of battle, hospital, and tent,
⁠Men chivalrous and never tired,
⁠Women devoted, love-inspired,
Who nursed to life the loyal ones you lent ”

“ Its helpless prey with hideous uproar.
Twice had I lost my footing; yet I clave,
As one who struggles more than life to save—
My every thought of her; but when at last,
Sore bruised and breathless, as one shoreward cast
After rude shipwreck, I dared raise my eyes—
Seeking in that vast Hell my Paradise,—
There, like some virgin image carved in stone,
She stood in her white radiance—alone. ”

“ By human thought, alone, and still,
I muse on one who dying praised
The God of Being, here:
On him who welcomed with a will
The gift of life, the boon of death,—
The while he heard, deep-toned and near,
The solemn forest's organ-breath. ”

“ When the shepherds are gone from the sunset hills,
⁠When evening is mildest in dingle and dale,
Through the hush comes a sound that enraptures and thrills,
⁠Light wafted along on the tremulous gale:
So passionate-sweet, so wildly out-welling,
That Ladon hears it with bosom swelling.
⁠We listen and sigh,—sigh and listen again,
⁠For we know it is Pan by that melting strain!
⁠We listen and sigh,—sigh and listen again,
⁠While the lithe reeds quiver as if in pain,—
⁠For we know it is Pan, we know it is Pan,
⁠We know it is Pan by that melting strain! ”

“ Warms the chill breast of earth,
And gives new birth
To beauty! High above
All miracles—the miracle of love,
Which by its own glad and triumphant power
Brings life to flower.
Oh, love is wonderful!
⁠More wonderful than is the dew-fed rose
⁠Whose petals half unclose,
⁠⁠In welcome of the light,
When first the Dawn comes robed in vesture cool
⁠⁠Of fragrant, shimmering white!—
More wonderful and strange
Than moonrise, which doth change
Dulness to glory—
Yea, with a touch transforms the mountains hoary,
⁠⁠And fills the darkling rills with living silver bright! ”

“ LE GRAND SALUT
"Major Dreyfus, in the name of the Republic and of the people of France, I proclaim you a knight of the Legion of Honour."
THERE is a power in innocence, a might
⁠Which, clothed in weakness, makes injustice vain:
⁠A strength, o'ertopping reason to explain,
Which bears it—though deep-buried out of sight—
Slowly and surely upward to the light:
⁠A conscious certainty amidst its pain
⁠That, robbed of all things, it shall all regain,
Through that eternal law which guards the right. ”

“ And as one startled wakes from a fair dream
⁠He fain would dream again, if that might be,
You looked on Death clothed in his might supreme,
⁠And gave yourself to him,—forgetting me.
All beauteous in the blossom-time of youth,
⁠Ere yet a cloud your radiance could dim,—
You knew him for God's messenger, in truth,
⁠And like an angel, went away with him. ”

“ How strange could death divide who, living, share
⁠All happiness and care!
Still as you gaze, bereft of your desire,
On the dull embers of your lonely fire,
⁠You shall behold me there,
And though through hiemal glooms you sometimes learn
⁠To doubt, nor hope discern,—
Yet when the timid firstling buds awake,
And birds come back and sing, your heart to break,—
⁠Always, I shall return! ”

“ More fitting worship the far drift of clouds
⁠O'er azure floating with a swan-like motion,
The Siren-lays faint heard amid the shrouds,
⁠The voiceless swell of the unfathomed ocean,
The silver Dian pours on the calm stream
Where pale the lotus-blossoms lie adream,—
Yet, mother of all high imaginings,
⁠In whom is neither barrenness nor dearth,
Wise guardian of the sacred springs
⁠Whose fresh primordial waters heal the earth,—
O soul of muted fire,
Of whom is born the passionate desire
⁠That gives to beauty birth ”

“ THE world in mourning for a Russian Tsar!
⁠A despot of the nineteenth century
⁠Mourned by the nations that have made men free!
⁠Ye captives of his rule! where'er ye be,
Whether in dungeons or in mines afar—
Wretches who mourn, yet mourn not for the Tsar,—
⁠Forgive the tears that seem a wrong to grief
⁠Barren of comfort and without relief;
The Tsar was Russia's martyr—as ye are! ”

“ Have shown the world the bulwark set around thee,
⁠Adding new consecration to thy fame.
Nor have they blessed thee, only: Fate defying,
⁠Others in lands remote shall fear contemn,
And find it easier, themselves denying,
⁠To die like heroes, too,—remembering them.
They do not lie in lonely graves forsaken,
⁠Who for high ends can so supremely dare;
From human hearts they can no more be taken,
⁠And Immortality is with them there. ”

“ For our ideals make us what we are,—
⁠Through self-effacing years,
Thou, toiling where the burdened city moans,
Hast lost no accent of the higher zones.
⁠Smiles, and the truth of tears,
And memories, and melodies unsung,
Have visited thy heart, and kept it young.
Thou hast had strength, where many failed, to glean
Good from a doubtful harvest; thou hast seen
⁠Light where the shade lay deep.
The future with the present praise must blend
To crown thy triumphs worthily, O friend! ”

“ Shall hold glad converse with your spirit brave,
Nor from your lips hear words that lift and save,
Through all the lengthening number of our days!
By the great Silence you are set apart
From all the restless travail of the heart
⁠⁠That beats in us
⁠So passionate and strong—
Are passed beyond the evening angelus
⁠And Memnon's morning song. .⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.
Man's life on earth—how brief!
Yet we with Nature hold the high belief,
⁠E'en when our hearts are breaking,
That death is but the vital way,
Darkness the shadow of the day,
⁠And sleep the door to waking! ”

“ Call upon all thy strength—not later, now!—
⁠Now while the world waits breathless for thy deed,
That it eternally may disavow
The faith that "Might makes Right," nor bow
⁠To Savagery's brute creed!
Brave in defence of honor and the word
⁠Which, given freely, binds and maketh free.
Arm, that the weak and helpless may be heard!—
Yea, that the hearts of men may still be stirred
⁠To Christ's humanity! ”

“ And spring returns to the world again,
⁠With breath as of lilac and clover.
With a certain soft, appealing grace
⁠ (Surely some sorrow hath kissed her!)
She gives to our vision her girlish face,
⁠And we know how we've missed her—missed her! ”

“ As sung the birds in Paradise
⁠When life and love were young!
He and I,—O aching heart!—
Only a narrow grave apart!
⁠Yet seeking for his face in vain,
How changed, to me, the world has grown;
How cold it seems, how strange, how lone,
⁠How infinite in pain! ”

“ MIGHT I return to that May-day of gladness
⁠When life is young, and all its promise fair;
Might I efface each memory of sadness,
⁠And put away the weary load of care,—
To pluck the rose that in Time's Eden blows,
⁠I would not go, were I to miss you there! ”

“ After the heat of anger,
⁠Love that all life enwraps;
After the stress of battle,
⁠The trumpet sounding "taps."
After despair and doubting,
⁠A faith without alloy,
God here and over yonder,—
⁠The end of all things—joy! ”

“ So, love, thy voice breathes a diviner music in the chill
⁠Of autumn, when the glen is still
⁠And Flora's gold all tarnished on the hill,
Than in the time when merry May calls forth her bashful flowers. ”

“ Though I to-day first behold you—
You who must pass as a vision
Nobly enthralling and glad?
Does he who, lone in the forest,
Finds there an exquisite blossom,
Joy in it less that its beauty
Blooms not to fade on his breast? ”

“ Here midst the heaving billows—this unending stretch of sea
⁠Where scarce an ocean-bird has strength to fly,
Unnumbered leagues from any strand where habitations be,
⁠Alone, no comrade vessel sailing nigh,
The deep unplumbed beneath us, and, above, a frowning dome,
I do but turn my eyes on thee, and straightway it is home! ”

“ Sobbed as the infant that each mood doth borrow
⁠Sobs for the mother's woe.
Wild grew my voice and stormy with his passion,
⁠Lifted at last unto a tragic might;
Then swift it changed in sad and subtile fashion
⁠To pathos infinite,
Swooning away beneath his faltering fingers
⁠Till the grieved plaint seemed, echoless, to die;
When, calm, he rose, and with a touch that lingers,
⁠Laid me forever by.
Forever! Ah, he comes no more—my lover! ”

“ Where shall we find a grave for you?
They thought of a spirit as brave as light,
And they bore him up to a lonely height,
And they laid him there, where he loved to be,
On a mountain gazing o'er the sea! ”

“ SHE will not hear you if you sing,
Bluebird and whitethroat of the Spring!
Why did you stay away so long,
She wearying for your song?
She will not notice if you pass,
Sweet airs that woo the meadow grass!
Why could you not have spread, more fleet,
Soft carpet for her feet? ”

“ Of the fair meads you loved so well
And dream of, pensive, hour by hour,—
Oh, tell him, who with shades must live,
Vexed by forlorn regrettings vain,
How mortals, mid earth's greater pain,
May, loving, all forgive! ”