Helena Jane Coleman

“ Ah! they can speak the love so true
I have no other way to tell,
And so to one for tribute meet,
I bring my flowers, dewy, sweet.
And there is one I love full well
Beneath whose tender brooding eyes
Such little songs as in me dwell
Are gathered into melodies,
And heart to heart doth softly reach
By music's mystic, yearning speech.
And still is one with whom I share
Such wisdom as the years have taught
Through sacrament of daily care
That life's experience has wrought ”

“ And now, as then, I feel the ebb and flow
Of that elusive rapture and surprise
Which only haunting beauty can bestow—
And now, as then, my baffled spirit tries
To rend the imponderable veil and know. ”

“ Is sin repudiated, all its sting
And power made void. This is the final test,
Love's sacred task and deepest offering;
Behold, the hope and germ of all my best
Lies in the very worthlessness I bring! ”

“ In which a woman's highest power lies;
One felt the heart beat true and tenderwise
Beneath the velvet folds and filmy lace,
Grim sorrow there had seemed to find no place,
But only peace and love in loveliest guise. ”

“ We grow more reconciled to Nature's ways,
And more responsive, with the passing years,
Finding in them a solace for the fears
Engendered by the thought of lessening days;
There comes a sense of comradeship that stays
The lonely questioning heart, and more endears
The deep and changeful beauty that appears
More deep and beautiful with every phase. ”

“ The face of our beloved, and realize
The deeps of our own heart; 'tis when we yearn
With unspent passion that the spirit-eyes
Unclose to Heavenly vision, and we learn
Those narrow ways that lead to Paradise. ”

“ With life's wild rapture eager, hastening;
How should they know that Winter yet must bring
Its icy chains to bind the tender feet—
That driving storms of snow and chilling sleet
And javelins of frost shall smite and sting? ”

“ ENLARGEMENT.
Around us unaware the solemn night
Had hung its shadowy mantle, while we sought
To find each other by the roads of thought;
I felt thy orbit nearing, and a light
Streamed suddenly across my inner sight,
Effulgent, incommunicable, fraught
With some constraining tenderness that caught
My quickened spirit to its utmost height. ”

“ Nor feel within his pulse the Spring-tide beat,
Nor love again, I gave for him instead,
And poured upon his low, unconscious head
The sacramental love that shrives the dead.
And though I went my way with eyelids wet
For grief of one whom I had never met,
Because his day so soon was ended, yet
I turned my face up Heavenward again,
Believing human love is not in vain ”

“ In all we do and are, and we must lose
The power of inner vision if we stay
Among the shadows grieving, nor possess
Discerning mind and steadfast heart to choose
Those thoughts that make us friends with happiness. ”

“ And twilight with its pensive shadows fell—
Loosed from the prison-wards of care and dread,
Lured from our selfish griefs by beauty's spell—
Along dim thoroughfares our thoughts were led
To haunts of peace where love and silence dwell. ”

“ Within my heart still bums an unquenched fire,
Like Israel of old I must prevail,
Or failing, still reach on to something higher—
They counted Him a failure when He trod
Those slopes of Calvary that led to God! ”

“ That we so close to earth, bowed with the stress
Of daily toil and hopes that come to naught—
Our senses dulled with grieving—hardly guess
What meaning from it all might not be wrought
To beauty by some higher consciousness. ”

“ Yields to the world, its master, weary, dumb,
In bondage to the trivial, all its powers,
And yet behind the surface fret and strife
In anguish sees, when night and silence come,
The unattained divinity of life. ”

“ Thy longing passion spends itself in vain!
No distant heights there are for thee to gain,
The azure deeps where white wings may unfold
In glimmering dawns or flaming sunset-gold
Unknown of thee shall evermore remain. ”

“ Our kinship with the world that round us lies;
Though sunlit fields and woods and arching skies,
And flowers that break in shafts of living flame,
Constrain with beauty all our quickened frame,
Breathing love's messages in sweetest guise ”

“ THROUGH all the anguish of these days,
The haunting horror and the woe,
One thought can set my heart ablaze
My memory aglow.
It is his look just as he turned
After the last good-byes were said,
A look as though for him there burned
Some beacon-light ahead. ”

“ I see life's little day begin to wane,
And hear the well-loved voices call in vain
Across the narrowing margin of my years;
And as the Valley of the Shadow nears,
Such yearning tides of tenderness and pain
Sweep over me that I can scarce restrain
The gathering flood of ineffectual tears. ”

“ By unseen pathways to the distant spheres,
What life had failed to do, death wrought at last,
For they who through the long, embittered years
Had spoken not, now stood with hands locked fast,
And looked into each other's face with tears. ”

“ When the wind is in your face,
And a thunder-storm is brewing,
And night comes down apace—
'Tis then you feel the wonder
And immensity of space!
Far in the gathering darkness
Against the dying day
The ghostly hills are lying,
The hills that stand for aye—
How in the dusk they glimmer
And palpitate away! ”

“ Than falls to the lot of woman,
In these great days with the world ablaze
And Britain's face to the foeman;
In these great days when the hour has struck
Calling for every ounce of pluck—
God help me not to curse my luck
That I was born a woman! ”

“ How shall we measure loss or gain—
On what achievement make our boast?
O, is there not a place for each?
One wins his soul by sweat of brow,
Another by the inward reach,—
And God hath need of both, I trow. ”

“ That joy waits where the white road bends,
And every face you meet is a friend's.
'Tis when you're young that dreams come true,
And never a cloud but the sun shines through,
When life holds out both hands to you. ”

“ Earth, thy cradle, swings apace,
Safe art thou in thy nesting-place,
Sleep, my baby, sleep.
At the heart of life art thou,
Thorns and roses even now
Grow to pierce and crown thy brow,
Sleep, my baby, sleep. ”

“ Into a tenderness unstained of tears;
'Tis this that we would fold you in,
Our spirits' next and nearest kin.
Think not, Beloved, that you have suffered change
To us, it is the world that has grown strange
We are more wholly yours, indeed,
As the swift tides of earth recede ”

“ Remember, though the way was long
And cumbersome the load,
I tried to take the road
With jest and song.
And though my days were sometimes spent
In loneliness apart,
I bore a soldier's heart,
Fearless, content. ”

“ Courage and strength of him she took,
And heart to face the road alone.
No word was said; the years behind
Held no regret; and each to each
Gave pledge of what their souls divined
Better in silence than in speech. ”

“ A nation's hope enshrine, a nation's pride,
And one can scarcely look unmoved upon
The nation's youth now gathering to their side,
So great the future to be lost or won—
So sweet the siren-songs, so swift the tide! ”

“ A woman's heart—the children's soft uproar,
Mercifully unconscious at their play—
And mine own arméd will, I keep at bay
The haunting fear that waits beside my door,
The furtive ghost that must forever more
Companion me upon the narrowing way ”

“ That lurk about our feet like hidden snares,
And set him free for higher thought and deed;
Making her heart a home to meet his need
As only women can, she gave surcease
Of grinding stress and fenced him in with peace. ”

“ And do their exiled hearts beat faster
Roaming in thought their native sod?
Dream they of Canada crowned and golden,
Flushed with her Autumn diadem?
In years to come when time is olden,
Canada's dream shall be of them ”

“ The common lot again,
To mingle tears with tears, and share
Life's heritage of pain.
There, though he bears no meed of praise,
Yet, rounded with content,
He knows a joy that far outweighs
The world's aggrandisement. ”

“ Pray that every British heart
In the years that are to be,
Play the honest British part,
Holding life more reverently
For the sacred lives they gave,
And the deathless liberty
They are dying now to save. ”

“ That steals upon the sense in solitude,
I drifted near a shadowy island wood
Where all was silent, scarce a leaf was stirred—
So still the air—when suddenly I heard
The piercing, anguished cry as of a bird
In such distress it made the echoes ring
And set the startled silence quivering—
The wild appeal of some sweet feathered thing
In its extremity. ”

“ Should death take thee into keeping,
Sharer of the soulless ground,
Yet stand fast with sword uplifted,
Wheat from chaff is surely sifted;
Though thou leave all earth behind thee
Never fear but love will find thee ”

“ The silence of thy forest ways
Has given peace to troubled days,
And all thy lovely, leafy things
Have brought the joy a comrade brings.
Beneath thy dome of tender blue
I've learned to measure life anew ”

“ Can love disown?
Can truth be overthrown?
Say not for us they died;
They touched that dimly-visioned height
The ever-enlarging soul of man
Has yet to climb; their feet outran
The world's slow gait ”

“ Of that white light that like a flame
Thy love has set amidst my days.
For with that clearer light there came
A vision of the far-off sea
We mortals know not how to name,
That borders on Infinity. ”

“ Doth love its purest rapture gain,
Words have no power to express
Our highest flights of joy or pain.
The soul in quietness alone
Attains the hidden source of power,
The truth most deeply of us known
Comes in the solitary hour. ”

“ Where devious roadways twist and cross
How shall we find the narrow way
That leads afar to endless day,
Past all this fevered fret and loss?
Can doubting spirits ever thrust
Their roots deep to the heart of life? ”

“ MORE LOVELY GROWS THE EARTH.
More lovely grows the earth as we grow old,
More tenderness is in the dawning spring,
More bronze upon the blackbird's burnished wing,
And richer is the autumn cloth-of-gold ”

“ When others stood in need;
But strove to meet each new demand
With patient word and deed.
So went the seasons. Wrapped in mist
The mountains, blue and gold,
Behind their veils of amethyst
Still wait, but—he is old! ”

“ It sweeps at times with force sublime,
And always like the wraith it seems
Of happier clime.
For in the South its home has been,
A sun-kissed, warm and fertile land,
Where Nature pours her treasure from
Unstinting hand. ”

“ Still through the dark am I aware
Of how they stand in beauty there,
Since to the timid, wandering air
Each fragrant bloom its passion flings
And to my sense fresh rapture brings
From all the lovely hidden things. ”

“ Scarlet wing will flash by,
Meadow-lark will soar high—
O, and that is where I
Turn my longing face!
Never days like those days,
Never joy like mine;
All the world a soft haze—
All the world a shrine! ”

“ And trust the Love behind it all,
Life's promises partaking?
The frailest little flower that blows
A higher dream of Heaven knows
Than he who dully grieving goes
When round him Spring is breaking. ”

“ WHEN AUTUMN COMES.
When Spring first breathes on the russet hill,
In her own faint, lovely fashion,
One's pulses stir with a sudden thrill;
But when Autumn comes the heart stands still.
Moved with a deeper passion. ”