Ina Coolbrith Poems

IN winter-time one steadfast hope I had:
When rains should cease to fall,
And earth re-summon all
Her blossom-guests, I should again be glad.

And then, my heart unlifted still, I said,
Too pallid and too chill
These skies, wait yet until
The summer's serene blue smiles overhead.

Its red the rose surrenders to the leaves;
The orchard branches yield
Their fruit, and far afield
The reapers sing amid their gathered sheaves.

The circle of the year is all complete;
And in its wintry hour,
In fruitage or in flower,
I know the world is very fair and sweet.

I know that not from land, or sky, or sea,
The restless spirit takes
Its sombre hues, and makes
A discord of God's golden harmony.

Within, some false note jars the perfect strain
The great Musician meant. . . .
O bird of lost content,
Come back, and build, and brood, and sing again!
...

It's O my heart, my heart!
To be out in the sun and sing;
To sing and shout in the fields about,
In the balm and the blossoming.

Sing loud, O bird in the tree,
O bird, sing loud in the sky,
And honey-bees, blacken the clover-beds—
There are none of you glad as I.

The leaves laugh low in the wind,
Laugh low with the wind at play;
And the odorous call of the flowers all
Entices my soul away.

For O but the world is fair, is fair,
And O but the world is sweet!
I will out in the gold of the blossoming mold
And sit at the Master's feet.

And the love my heart would speak
I will fold in the lily's rim,
That the lips of the blossom, more pure and meek.
May offer it up to Him.

Then sing in the hedgerow green, O Thrush,
O Skylark, sing in the blue;
Sing loud, sing clear, that the King may hear,
And my soul shall sing with you.
...

NOT to the brave upon the battle-field
Alone, the palms of victory belong,
Nor only to the great of earth the song
Of praise and paean should the singer yield.
Greater the souls, who, single-handed, wield
The battle-axe against the hosts of wrong,
Unknown, unnoted, in life's reckless throng,
And only in God's day to stand revealed.
Ah, by our side in patient, humble guise,
How many walk the silent conqueror's way !
As fixed stars in fame's eternal skies
Their stainless lustre worthiest to shine.
Unlaureled heroes! reverently I lay
Low at your feet this tribute leaf of mine.
...

THE summer-rose is dead;
The sad leaves, withered,
Strew ankle-deep the pathways to our tread.
Dry grasses mat the plain,
And drifts of blossom slain;
And day and night the wind is like a pain.

No nightingale to sing
In green boughs, listening,
Through balmy twilight hushes of the spring.
No thrush, no oriole
In music to out-roll
The little golden raptures of his soul.

O royal summer-reign!
When will you come again,
Bringing the happy birds across the main?
O blossoms ! when renew
Your pretty garbs, and woo
Your waiting, wild-bee lovers back to you?

For lo, my heart is numb;
For lo, my heart is dumb—
Is silent till the birds and blossoms come!
A flower, that lieth cold
Under the wintry mold,
Waiting the warm spring-breathing to unfold.

O swallow! all too slow
Over the waves you go,
Dipping your light wings in their sparkling flow.
Over the golden sea,
O swallow! flying free,
Fly swiftly with the summer back to me.
...

HERE, vast and awful, the Sierras rear
Their everlasting summits to the sky;
The mighty waters of the sunset lie
In all their changing opalescence; here
The brooding melancholy of the sere,
Dun autumn woods; the laughing leafery
Of budding boughs, blending each tender dye
With the lush green of the awakening year.
This is not painted canvas, — this is life,
Creation, earth, in all her varying moods!
These fields a-thrill with motion and with light,
These forest-ways, with dream and mystery rife!
Here nature's heart throbs through the solitudes!
Here nature's soul looks from the mystic height.
...

If I lie at ease in the cradling trees,
Till the day drops down in the golden seas,
Till the light shall die from the warm, wide sky,
And the cool night cover me—what care I?

All as one when the day is done,
The woven woof or the web unspun:
In my leafy nest I will lie at rest,
A careless dreamer, and that is best.

Does a brown eye wake for a trouble's sake,
Ye little tenants of wood and brake?
What deeper woe does a wild-bee know
Than to vex the heart of a honey-blow?

Bonny birds, sing to me; butterflies wing to me;
Slender convolvulus, flutter and cling tome;
Dim spice-odors and meadow-musk,
Blow about me from dawn to dusk!

Though the city frown from her hill-tops brown,
And the weary toilers go up and down,
I will lie at rest in my leafy nest,
A careless dreamer, and that is best.
...

Under whatever sky
Thy pathway be,
Near or afar,
Clear be its light of sun, its light of star:
Bright as the memory
We hold of thee,
Good-by!

Good-by!
Let not our parting sigh
Be wholly lost in the new words that greet.
New loves may be as sweet,
New friends may serve as surely,
Hold as dearly, love as purely,
But never hearts may be
Truer than these whose thoughts go, after thee,
Good-by!
Good-by!
...

IT befell me on a day —
Long ago; ah, long ago!
When my life was in its May,
In the May - month of the year.
All the orchards were like snow
With pink - flushes there and here;
And a bird sang, building near,
And a bird sang far away,
Where the early twilight lay.

Long ago! ah, long ago!
Youth's sweet May passed quite away
May that never more is May!
Yet I hear the nightingale
Singing far adown the vale
Where the early twilight lies,
Singing sad, and sweet, and strong
And I wonder if the song
May be heard in Paradise!
...

IN MEMORY OF CELIA THAXTER.


There is shadow on the sea!
And a murmur, and a moan,
In its muffled monotone,
Like a solemn threnody;
And the sea-gulls, on their white
Pinions, moving to and fro,
Are like phantoms, in their flight;
As they sweep from off the gray,
Misty headlands, far away,
And about the Beacon Light,
Wheel in circles, low and slow,
Wheel and circle, peer and cry,
As though seeking, restlessly,
Something vanished from their sight.
As though listening for the clear
Tones they never more may hear,—
Music, missing from the day,
Music, missing from the night,—
Through the years, that wax and wane,
That may never sound again.
She, who ever loved the sea,
Loved and voiced its minstrelsy—
Sang its white-caps, tossing free,
Sang the ceaseless breaker-shocks,
Dashing, crashing, on the rocks,
Sang its moon-drawn tides, its speech,
Silver-soft, upon the beach,
Walks the margin's golden floor,—
Floats upon its breast no more.

Nay! how know we this to be?
That the forms that we may not see,
Passed from mortal touch and ken,
Never come to earth again?
When this brittle houce of clay
From the spirit breaks away,
Does the mind forego its will?
Is the voice's music still?
Do the hands forget their skill?
From the harp—great Homer's heart,—
Do no mighty numbers come?
Lost, divinest Raphael's art,
And the lips of Shakespeare dumb?
All the years of joy and pain
That are lived, but lived in vain;
Memory's graven page a blot,
Unrecorded and forgot!
Oh, believe, believe it not!
Man is God's incarnate thought:
Life, with all the gifts He gave,
All the wondrous powers He wrought,
Finds not ending at the grave.
Part, himself, of Deity,
Man, the spirit, cannot die.
'In my Father's house there are
Many mansions.' Did Christ say
Whether near, or whether far?
It may be beside us still
Bide these forms invisible;
Or, if passed to realms away,
Beyond sight's remotest star,
Does that bind the soul to stay,—
Never, never, to retrace
The golden passage-ways of space?—
As a parted child might yearn
For the mother arms, and turn,
Fain to look on Earth's dear face.
'Twixt the heart that loves and her
Space could place no barrier:
Thought, that swifter is than light,
Leaps a universe in flight.

So I love to think, indeed,
That this singing spirit, freed
From her lesser, lower height—
Soaring to the Infinite,—
Turns with loving eyes, and smile,
Still unto her garden-isle;
Sees the tower's beacon-light,
Shining safely through the night;
Sees the white surf as it rolls
Round her treasured Isles of Shoals,—
Looking from that vaster sea,
Which we name Eternity.
...

IF only in my dreams I once might see
Thy face! though thou shouldst stand
With cold, unreaching hand,
Nor vex thy lips to break
The silence, with a word for my love's sake;
Nor turn to mine thine eyes,
Serene with the long peace of Paradise,
Yet, henceforth, life would be
Made sweet, not wholly bitter unto me.

If only I might know for verity,
That when the light is done
Of this world's sun,
And that unknown, long-sealed
To sound and sight, is suddenly revealed,
That thine should be the first dear voice thereof,
And thy dear face the first—O love, my love!
Then coming death would be
Sweet, ah, most sweet, not bitter unto me!
...