Susan Coolidge

“ Laughter shall follow presently,
[139] And sighing turn to merry song.
They are not cruel, that they smile;
Their eyes, grown old, can farther see,
Weighing the large thing and the less
With wise, experienced tenderness,—
The moment’s grief with joy to be
In such a little, little while.
Just so the angels, starry-eyed,
With vision cleared and made all-wise,
Look past the storm-rack and the rain
And shifting mists of mortal pain
To where the steadfast sunshine lies,
And everlasting summer-tide.
They see, beyond the pang, the strife,
(To us how long, to them how brief!) ”

“ To get back to scarce-tasted bliss,—
What grief could be so sharp as this?
[138]
“HOW CAN THEY BEAR IT UP IN HEAVEN?”
HOW can they bear it up in heaven,
They who so loved, and love us yet,
If they can see us still, and know
The heavy hours that come and go,
The fears that sting, the cares that fret,
The hopes belied, the helps ungiven?
Can they sit watching us all day,
Measure our tears, and count our sighs,
And mark each throb and stab of pain,
The ungranted wish, the longing vain,
And still smile on with happy eyes,
Content on golden harps to play?
Ah no! we will not do them wrong! ”

“ OUR DAILY BREAD.
“GIVE us our daily bread,” we pray,
And know but half of what we say.
The bread on which our bodies feed
Is but the moiety of our need.
The soul, the heart, must nourished be,
And share the daily urgency.
And though it may be bitter bread
On which these nobler parts are fed,
No less we crave the daily dole,
O Lord, of body and of soul! ”

“ The noonday sun to hide;
But through the night there stir and thrill
[256] The sleeping strengths of life and will.
For souls there comes a winter-tide,
For souls there blooms a spring;
Though winter days may linger long,
And snows be deep and frosts be strong,
And faith be sorely tried,
When Christ shall shine, who is the Sun,
Spring-time shall be for every one.
Oh, mighty Lord of winter-tide!
Oh, loving Lord of spring!
Come to our hearts this Easter Day,
Melt all the prisoning ice away,
And evermore abide,
Making both good and ill to be
Thy blessed opportunity. ”

“ The streamlet cannot rise:
By law inexorably blent,
[42] Each is the other’s measurement.
Ah, lonely tarn! ah, striving rill!
So yearn these souls of ours,
And beat with sad and urgent will
Against the unheeding powers.
In vain is longing, vain is force;
No stream goes higher than its source.
[43]
AN EASTER SONG.
A SONG of sunshine through the rain,
Of spring across the snow,
A balm to heal the hurts of pain,
A peace surpassing woe.
Lift up your heads, ye sorrowing ones,
And be ye glad of heart,
For Calvary and Easter Day,
Earth’s saddest day and gladdest day,
Were just one day apart! ”

“ Earth’s sharpest pain grown littleness
In the new tide of life made hers,
Smiling that we should call her dead!
Smile on, dear Heart, until the dawn!
When once the eternal heights are bared,
And the long earthly shadows flit,
And with clear eyes we front the skies,
We too shall smile with heavenly scorn
At the dull, human selves who dared
To call life “Death” and pity it!
[161]
AT DAWN OF DAY.
THE yellow lighthouse star is quenched
Across the lonely sea;
The mountains rend their misty veils,
The wind of dawn blows free ”

“ Loved even as sickly children are, the more for doubts and fears,
O Lord, whose word is faithfulness eternal to endure,
Take it; and give me, in its stead, the Hope that standeth sure.
The pain, that half was baffled will, which could not bear to die,
And, stilled by day, would stir by night and wake me with its cry,
That pain so close, so intimate, that Death could scarce destroy,
I leave it, Lord, before thy feet; give me instead thy joy. ”

“ Life seemed to stay its flying feet and cease its outward race,
And, poised as waves poise, turn its face toward the deserted shore,
[222] And with a pitying rush come back to visit it once more.
We saw the freshening forces rise in every yellowing stem,
In budding oak and tasselled larch and scarlet maple gem.
Inch after inch, wave following wave, it rose on every side;
And now the tide is at its flood, the blessed summer-tide.
For every ebb there comes a flow; brave hearts can smile at both.
The waters come, the waters go; we watch them, nothing loath. ”

“ ON EASTER DAY.
WE light the Easter fire, and the Easter lamps we trim,
And lilies rear their chaliced cups in churches rich and dim,
And chapel low and Minster high the same triumphant strains
In city and in village raise, and on the lonely plains.
“Life” is the strain, and “endless life” the chiming bells repeat,—
A word of victory over death, a word of promise sweet;
And as the great good clasps the less, the sun a myriad rays,
So do a hundred thoughts of joy cling round our Easter days. ”

“ Ready to give to all of his stintless ray;
And ’tis we who have “set,” it is we who have turned away!
“The Lord has hidden his face,” we sadly cry,
As we sit in the night of grief with no helper by.
“Guiding uncounted worlds in their courses dim,
How should our little pain be marked by him?”
But all the while that we mourn, the Lord stands near,
And the Son divine is waiting to help and hear;
And ’tis we who hide our faces, and blindly turn away,
While the Sun of the soul shines on mid the perfect day.
[255]
EASTER.
FLOWERS die not in the winter-tide,
Although they wake in spring ”

“ With a new distance in his eyes,
A distance death had failed to set,—
If hearts met not when bodies met!
If when you smiled you heard him sigh,
And when you spoke he only heard
As men absorbed hear absently
The idle chirping of a bird, [137]
As, rapt in thoughts surpassing speech,
His mind moved on beyond your reach;
And still your joy was made his pain,
And still the distance wider grew,
His daily loss your daily gain,
Himself become more strange to you
Than when your following soul sought his
In the vast secret distances ”

“ Relief from pain,
The satisfaction of perplexing fears,
Full compensation for the long, hard years,
Full understanding of the Lord’s intent,
The things that were so puzzling made quite plain;
And all astonished joy as, to the spot,
From further skies,
Crowd our belovèd with white wingèd feet,
And voices than the chiming harps more sweet, [69]
Faces whose fairness we had half forgot,
And outstretched hands, and welcome in their eyes;—
Heart cannot image forth the endless store
We may but guess;
But this one lesser joy I hold my own:
All shall be known in heaven ”

“ Scarce heard, scarce minded, passed us like the wind,
Breathed by a dear voice, which has grown unkind,
Turns sweet to bitter, sunshine to eclipse.
The instinct of a change we cannot prove,
The pitiful tenderness, the sad too-much,
The sad too-little, shown in look or touch,—
[191] All these are wounding thorns of thorny love.
Ah, sweetest rose which earthly gardens bear,
Fought for, desired, life’s guerdon and life’s end,
Although your thorns may slay and wound and rend,
Still men must snatch you; for you are so fair. ”

“ Thou wilt reach heaven before me, but I may follow too.
There is a resurrection for the Body, as the Soul;
Comrades to all eternity, we should be comrades true
Who own one common fate and life, who seek the self-same goal. ”

“ Gold, frankincense, and myrrh,—’tis all I have to bring
To thee, O Holy Child, now throned in heaven’s mid!
Because thou art so kind, take the poor offering,
And let me go forth blessed, as once the Wise Men did.
[219]
A THOUGHT.
GOD, in his power, keeps making more men,
Peopling the great world again and again;
Age after age, as the centuries roll,
Never he makes a mistake with a soul,
Never neglects them, and never forgets.
Atoms in space from their birth to their end,
Dead or alive, he is always their friend. ”

“ Wooing the vision long,
The Gentile world had missed the truth,
And Heaven one “sweet new song.”
Souls might have perished in blind pain,
And the Lord Christ have died in vain
For them. He knew not what it meant,
But Peter rose and Peter went.
Oh, souls which sit in upper air,
Longing for heavenly sight,
Glimpses of truth all fleeting-fair,
Set in unearthly light,—
Is there no knocking heard below,
[58] For which you should arise and go,
Leaving the vision, and again
Bearing its message unto men? ”

“ Time hides its face at Eternity’s call;
Men may be many, but God he is all.
[221]
AT FLOOD.
ALL winter long it ebbed and ebbed, and left the cold earth bare.
No pulse of growth the bare boughs stirred, no hope the frozen air;
No twitters cheered the snow-heaped nests, no songs the vine and trees,
As outward, outward swept the tide, and left the world to freeze. ”

“ We trust the darling of our hearts to thee,
Asking no explanations of thy love;
Keep thou her safe alway, and give her back some day.
[77]
AT THE ALTAR.
I KNEEL before thine altar, Lord, and fain a gift would bring,
But all I have is worthless and unfit for offering;
A foolish heart, a foolish dream, a foolish, fruitless pain,—
Such are my all; O Love of Love, do not the gift disdain! ”

“ O potter’s field, did I call you bare?
No garden on earth can be more fair!
For deathless love has a deathless bloom,
And the lily of faithfulness a flower,
And they grow beside each lowly tomb,
And balm it with fragrance every hour;
And with God, who forgiveth till seven times seven,
A potter’s field may be gate of heaven.
[201]
UNEXHAUSTED.
ARE all the songs sung, all the music played?
Are the keys quite worn out, and soundless quite,
Which since sweet fancy’s dawning day have made
Perpetual melody for man’s delight,
And charmed the dull day and the heavy night? ”

“ By the one small stitch that was dropped that day.
One small life in God’s great plan,
How futile it seems as the ages roll,
Do what it may, or strive how it can
To alter the sweep of the infinite whole!
A single stitch in an endless web,
A drop in the ocean’s flow and ebb!
But the pattern is rent where the stitch is lost,
Or marred where the tangled threads have crossed;
And each life that fails of its true intent
Mars the perfect plan that its Master meant.
[20]
REPLY.
“WHAT, then, is Love?” ”

“ Love has such a little minute!
Day crowds on day with swift and noiseless tread,
Life’s end comes ere fairly we begin it;
Pain jostles joy, and hope gives place to dread.
Love me now!
It will be too late when we are dead! ”

“ Thy father, who had else more fitly told,
Is at the wars, the weary, wasting wars;—
Long years ago he sailed unto the wars,
And, dead or living, comes not back to us.
Unhappy is the son who, woman-bred,
Knows not the firm feel of a father’s hand;
And I, widow or wife, I know not which,
Wofulest widow, still more woful wife!
Must frame my faltering tongue to tell the tale,
And snatch my thoughts back from their present pain
To the old days, the hard and cruel days,
Full of sharp hatred and stern vengeances,
Which yet were beautiful to him and me
Who lived and loved each other and were young ”

“ And life ebb like a tide at sea,
Till underneath the misty veil
Our best belovèd, one by one,
Vanished and parted silently.
We stayed without, but still could say,
“Grief’s winter dureth not alway;
Who sleep in Christ with Christ shall rise.
We wait our Easter morn in tears,
They in the smile of Paradise.”
O thought of healing, word of strength!
O light to lighten darkest way!
O saving help and balm of ill!
For all our dead shall dawn at length
A slowly broadening Easter Day,
[180] A Resurrection calm and still. ”

“ Changes his form and swiftly vanishes.
“Then best not love,” she said.
Dear child, there is no better and no best;
Love comes not, bides not at thy slight behest.
As well might thy frail fingers seek to stay
The march of waves in yonder land-locked bay,
As stem the surging tide which ebbs and fills
Mid human energies and human wills.
The moon leads on the strong, resisting sea;
And so the moon of love shall beckon thee,
And at her bidding thou wilt leap and rise,
And follow o’er strange seas, ’neath unknown skies,
Unquestioning ”

“ THE WORLD IS VAST.
THE world is vast and we are small,
We are so weak and it so strong,
Onward it goes, nor cares at all
For us,—our silence or our song,
Our fast-day or our festival.
We tremble as we feel it sway
Beneath our feet as on we fare;
But, like a ball which children play,
God spins it through the far blue air.
We are his own; why should we care?
Transcriber’s Note:
Ostensible errors in layout were checked against other publishings of the poem and adjusted as noted below. ”

“ No drop but serves the slowly lifting tide,
No dew but has an errand to some flower,
No smallest star but sheds some helpful ray,
And man by man, each giving to all the rest,
Makes the firm bulwark of the country’s power:
There is no better way. ”

“ WHEN out of the body the soul is sent,
As a bird speeds forth from the opened tent,
As the smoke flies out when it finds a vent,
To lose itself in the spending,—
Does it travel wide, does it travel far,
To find the place where all spirits are? ”

“ And poured through every artery my warm, pulsating tide?
“Thou shalt lie down to sleep one day, and long that sleep shall last,
For I will shake thy shackles off and soar up to the skies;
What power shall avail thee then to break thy slumber fast?
What voice shall reach thy dreaming ear, to say to thee, ‘Arise’?” [244]
“Ah, Soul!” ”

“ The noontide flashed, the noontide sang,
Along the glittering distant track;
The dancing wind made answer brave.
It seemed that all kept festival,
That joy fires burned and joy bells rang;
But still our hearts went hovering back
To sit beside one lonely grave.
It seems so strange, so half unkind,
That still the earth with life should stir,
That still we smile, and still we jest. ”