William Stanley Braithwaite

“ Always, in my endeavor to disengage the vital substance in poetry, I have tried to show what was the quality of that substance, what particular significance it took, in the thoughtful and lovely lyrical work of Mrs. Coates. To interpret her spirit, with all its delicate and subtle sympathies, touching with unobtrusive but familiar interests all human chords, sounding always a clear but subdued music, has been my purpose, rather than to emphasize the various forms with all their felicities of diction for which she has earned as well so wide and enviable a reputation. ”

“ No American poet has so clearly visioned this radiance of the spirit, with its glimmerings, still pure white, lighting the way that man takes among his fellows. No influence of that austerity in her art, which is like a suppressed sensibility of all that is sad and perplexing in human life, can lessen the sweetness or tinge the joy for which she sees everywhere so great a capacity, so desirable a need, in human nature. ”

“ Love, the very core of earth's mystery, is also the exaltation of man's soul. Mrs. Coates's lyrics never express it on that sentimental or sensuous side which reveals the sickliness and fleetingness of passion. There is a more enduring vitality, a commoner and more infectious charm to the love she sings, because it is the voice of an emotion that strikes its roots deeper in life than physical experience. ”

“ Coates rears the spiritual edifices of man's eternal needs. In these needs are reiterated the larger human ideals. The needs themselves flourish chiefly in the beliefs and hopes and strivings for human contentment and peace, as they express and emphasize their promptings in her poetry, instead of in that fulfilment of deed and growth which brings about a partial realization of the ideal. The edifices of man's eternal needs are shaped in her poetry out of no dream-world, are made of no symbols that float on the surface of man's changing sea of experience. ”

“ No art could be more one's own than Mrs. Coates's. In this she is not different from many another of the world's accomplished poets. What I mean is, though she sees the world made up of individuals, each with their particular and isolated hopes and aspirations, joys and sorrows, desires and ambitions, these individuals make humanity as a whole, and it is the life of the whole, full of its mysteries, unaccountable promptings and progress, which she sings, bringing it into communion with destiny and fulfilment. ”

“ It is by some consistent shaping of truth, on the anvil of life, out of the elements of experience and intuition, of imagination and spiritual sympathy, that the poet comes to impress its substantive quality upon the world. At the heart of all significant poetry is this purpose, working intensely through the natural feelings of the singer. The soul broods and meditates upon a few great and mysterious questions of human experience, and the art that is engaged in becomes in substance so many declarations, in form so many manifestations of these spiritual interests. ”

“ Once we recognize this completeness, this inclusive grasp of humanity, in Mrs. Coates's outlook upon life and the world, we come to realize the significance of that line already quoted, in which poetry is said to "envisage the veiled heart of things," and accept it as the particular function of her own work. Through the four books of her poetry, this steady purpose is seen. It never works in any isolated passion, in any emphasis where the emotion is the outcome of some detached motive of the individual. In all her poems the ideal is rendered articulate through some particular aspiration. ”

“ In all vital and beautiful poetry, there is at core the continual functioning of a few of the many truths which in their infinite totality make up the standard of perfection for human life. Through the peculiar temperament of the individual poet, these few truths, by the mystery of some prenatal endowment, are woven into the nature as a divine obligation to be promulgated in the world. ”

“ Coates's poetry is its grasp of and aspiration towards the ideal in human nature; if also it recognizes with equal intensity that man can never fully realize the ideal of life completely,—what is the specific quality, then, that so luminously quickens one's spirit, and supports one's weakening faith, and the troublesome doubts that are pressed upon one by the forces of the world. ”

“ Despite all the unhappiness and pain in the world, it is far better than it seems, because there is an ideal existence that man experiences in his nature, and this he strives to realize in his outer acts and relationships. His failure to realize these ideals fully, but which he perpetually acknowledges and sets as the standard of conduct, is what creates those intense aspirations of the soul, out of which are born those moods and desires, with their pathos and joys, making humanity beautiful. ”

“ Life itself is a great mystery, and all the apparent realities in the visible world, however solid or imperative in form and color, are but the embodiment of what is eternally real in the secret and veiled spirit in man and nature. ”

“ The chastity of thought and emotion is so deep in her as to create a poetic imagery tinctured with subtle and unfading coloring from the mystery of life itself, and consequently her lyrics, both in music and substance, are as pure as crystal. Compelling lyric art must be personal, which does not imply that it must be emotionally subjective. ”

“ In its significance, as the language of humanity rather than the voice of an individual, its authenticity widens into a sort of testament of the spirit, that all men, not of one particular class or creed, social condition or nationality, accept as the symbol of their aspirations and hopes. Mrs. Coates's lyrics fulfil this personate-universality, they are so distinctively a language, because the voice in which she speaks it is full of the feelings that lie dumb, or are imperfectly expressed, in the heart of the human race. ”

“ Coates loves, and whose spirit she renders with exquisite and subtle presentation of imaginative moods, hints to her everywhere, and in all seasons, of these two great attributes; and in man no less, there is a similar reliance, upon these mysteries which he is perpetually struggling to realize, and which by some inexplicable influence is constantly dominating, often against the perplexity of his more practical and temporary desires, the promptings of his inner life. ”

“ The social conscience of Whitman is only a more emphatic rousing of the ethical spirit to action. The cardinal virtues of democracy are Love and Justice; Whitman insisted on their being recognized in social and political relationships, as well as in private and domestic intercourse. The distinction of this sound human quality does not prevent an increasing elaboration of the art that preserves it, as Mrs. Coates's poetry exemplifies. ”

“ In its process of artistic embodiment, poetry shapes itself into symbols that render by suggestion, with a lucidity unmatched, the complex emotions of the individual. Feeling is at the root of all consciousness, and the mind defines feeling, by the selection and grouping of images, in its endeavor to express experiences affecting the spirit, whose inward crises are registered upon the world through physical actions and events. ”

“ In another beautiful lyric, one of the most perfect in all American poetry, the "Indian Pipe," a woodland herb, is made to symbolize an analogous perfection in man, and in pure rendering of the mystery in a natural object, lyric feeling has seldom shaped itself into finer or completer subtility of expression. ”

“ Coates's poetry, Love, Justice, and Immortality are sung, not as texts with their teachings of morality, social compensations, and philosophies of good and evil, but as the embodiments of warm and vital human traits and characteristics that afford the substantive pictures of life, becoming expressive and interpretative through the medium of lyric art. ”

“ By personalizing these questions, the poet achieves conviction; compels truth by emotional sympathy rather than by assevering a doctrine. It is this way that the art of poetry becomes an interpretation and criticism of life. ”

“ No American poet of to-day has mirrored life so faithfully. Adhering to the best traditions of English poetry, Mrs. Coates is one of a small group of contemporary singers who are intensely American in spirit. ”

“ They are set forth in the abstract ministrations of beauty; and conveyed in moods that take on the palpable and various deeds of man in his private and public history: and is like a golden thread, running through that pattern of form and color woven in the effort to represent the changing and elusive impressions of nature. ”

“ She draws from the Olympian world figures that typify some motive or desire in human conduct, and in the modern world the praise of men and women, heroic in attainment or sacrifice; or laments events that effect social and ethical progress, showing how beneficently she has brought her art, without modifying in the least its abstract function as a creator of beauty and pleasure, into the service of profound and vital problems. ”

“ Its sane and healthy outlook upon the world, rendered with a refined and subtle expression of language and form, maintains the clean and wholesome, and yet no less magical and passionate, standard which characterizes the superior achievement of English poetry. ”

“ She has conceived the high function of poetry as an interpretation and criticism of life, adhering to the canons of her beloved master, Matthew Arnold, and has proven her worth, and the right to receive and exercise the spiritual influence inherited from that great and austere poet. ”

“ The note of this group may be an ethical note, against which the unstaple exuberance and passion of some younger poets rebel, but it is the very essence of our national life and institutions, and must be reflected in our truest art. ”

“ Coates sees Justice at the secret root of all human goodness, and Immortality as the highest and best aspiration for which the soul of man strives through the multifarious shadows of the world. Nature, which Mrs. ”