Helena Jane Coleman

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What power fashioned it to cross
The wide abysses of the dark?
Shall not that Power in some sphere
Beyond our finite reach or ken
Bring into life and bloom again
The good we sought to fashion here? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ I trim to the gale, I carry my banner unfurled,
I steer to a chart unseen and unknown of the world.
I challenge the fates, I laugh in the face of defeat,
I look from afar and know not the sign of retreat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Within its bosom deep the virgin snows
From many a mountain-side.
And, drifting with the current, how we feel
The haunting witchery of Beauty's spell!
The world we left behind seems all unreal,
Where such enchantments dwell. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Only to the spirit ear.
Life is here in full abundance,
Overflowing, potent, sweet,
Youth with all his old-time rapture
Waits for undelaying feet,
Love in old and new disguises
Makes the loveliness complete. ”

“ And where the rowan-berries shine,
And gentians lift their blue;
We stay to hear the wind that grieves
Among the oak's crisp, russet leaves,
And watch the moving light, that weaves
Quaint patterns, peering through. ”

“ Beyond the reach of time and chance,
And wrecking tides of circumstance,
It saw as in a lightning glance
The distant goal. O not in vain
These earthly crucibles of pain,
In every loss may still be gain! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And yellows in the soft autumnal haze.
(And O to swing away where all is new,
And share the haunts of shy and tameless things,
To dip one's paddle in the liquid blue
And skim the water lightly as with wings!)
When on the broad St. Lawrence some gray day,
Among those islands wrought of mist and dreams,
I drift to realms of unreality
Where all the world a lovely vision seems ”

“ 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! ”

“ Under the velvet petals
Hints of hidden gold.
(And oh! the swift enchantment,
Half pain, half ecstasy,
When Beauty for a moment
Turns and looks our way—
In her eyes the haunting
Old, sweet mystery!) ”

“ 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. ”

“ EACH HATH HIS OWN.
Each hath his own. To thee the light
That broods in tender eyes—
To me the darkness and the blight
Of lonely wasting sighs.
In fields where fruits and flowers press,
With manna thou wert fed ”

“ 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. ”

“ There lingers still a touch of grace,
A fragrance every year new-born.
For lilacs there in Spring unfold
Beside the long unopened door,
Communion still they seem to hold
With those who come and go no more. ”

“ And in my heart a nameless
Wild exultation pressed.
Long past the day! Still often
Its mood will o'er me fall;
Again I hear those distant
Storm-voices call and call,
And know this busy getting
And spending is not all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ I touch the altar-flame.
········
Another chamber lies apart
Within the portals of my heart,
Whose easy door swings wide;
And when my feet its threshold tread
A tumult in my soul is bred
That sweeps me like a tide. ”

“ My own has come to me
And set my spirit free,
No more enchained I dwell,
The speeding arrow fell—
Wrought was the miracle,
Far realms beyond I see,
The best is yet to be—
My own has come to me! ”

“ The wash of low, monotonous waves
On shores unvisited,
The grasses whispering on graves
Where hearts have bled,
The travail of a world that lies
Below our mortal sense
Within their plaintive wandering sighs
Finds utterance. ”

“ Have woven canopies,
The nesting birds and droning bees
Croon her soft lullabies.
The comradeship of field and wood
Grows stronger year by year,
As she becomes to Nature's mood
More intimate and dear. ”

“ A throng that importuned me early, late:
"O, let us in to see your garden fair,
Its fragrance and its pleasantness to share,
"To walk with you amidst the cooling shade
And count your pretty flowers ere they fade." ”

“ Dost thou announce the day new-born,
And ring the changes of the morn,
And summon for an early mass
The little peoples of the grass,
That they may give fresh meed of praise
For sun and rain and summer days? ”

“ Floating far on purple wings.
Voyagers of earth and air,
Facing life without a care,
Dainty, dashing, debonair.
Gay adventurers at ease,
Sleek and happy as you please,
Drifting idly with the breeze. ”

“ I have not gone uncomforted,
Though lonely oft;
The dewy grass has been my bed,
The starlight soft
Above, around my way was shed,
And I have been
By cooling stream and fountain led
In pastures green. ”

“ Art thou from service set aside—
Thy cherished hope and work denied?
The greatest task of all may be
To show steadfast serenity.
Not all is lost while we may make
One comrade stronger for our sake. ”

“ The hollyhocks against the wall,
So serious and old-fashioned,
Were all astir, the larkspur tall
Seemed really quite impassioned.
I pondered, but I could not guess
What made their sudden consciousness. ”

“ Yet was it counted more than all;
'Tis what he does, not what he can,
That proves the measure of the man.
And so, if thou would'st have me strong,
Dwell not on what is sad or wrong;
'Tis not in marking how they fail
That men find courage to prevail. ”

“ But in her eyes a silent song
Grew ever deeper day by day.
········
Hast thou done reverence in thy heart
To such as she, who serve and wait—
Been mindful in thy place and part
That self-forgetful souls grow great? ”

“ Are also well attended;
That they can fashion queen or drone
Most undeniably is shown.
They practise every secret art,
Nature herself defying,
And to the death each plays his part—
'Tis really stupefying ”