Ina Coolbrith Poems

Took a walk together;
O, how beautiful the way
Through the blooming heather!
Far-off bells rang matin-chimes,
Birds sang, silver-voicing,
And our happy hearts beat time
To the earth's rejoicing.
Well-a-day! ah, well-a-day!
Then pale grief had missed me,
And mirth and I kept company
Ere Cupid kissed me!

Love ran idly where he would,
Child-like, all unheeding;
I as carelessly pursued
The pathway he was leading:
Till upon the shadowed side
Of a cool, swift river,
Where the sunbeams smote the tide,
Goldenly a-quiver—
Well-a-day! ah, well-a-day!
'Love,' I cried, 'come rest thee.'
Ah, but heart and I were gay
Ere Cupid kissed me!

Shadows of a summer cloud
Fell on near and far land;
Fragrantly the branches bowed
Every leafy garland;
While with shining head at rest,
Next my heart reclining,
Love's white arms, with soft caress,
Round my neck were twining.
Well-a-day! ah, well-a-day!
Love who can resist thee?
On the river-banks that day
Cupid kissed me!

Woe is me! in cheerless plight,
By the cold, sad river,
Seek I Love, who taken flight,
Comes no more forever:
Love from whom more pain than bliss
Every heart obtaineth,
For the joy soon vanished is
While the pang remaineth.
Well-a-day! ah, well-a-day!
Would, Love, I had missed thee,
Peace and I are twain for aye,
Since Cupid kissed me.
...

To feel your arms about me,
To see your living face,
Of all within God's giving
This were supremest grace!

To be again together
As in long years ago,
Were all, were all of Heaven
My soul would ask to know.
...

NOW the- summer all is over!
We have wandered through the clover,
We have plucked in wood and lea
Blue-bell and anemone.

We were children of the sun,
Very brown to look upon:
We were stainéd, hands and lips,
With the berries' juicy tips.

And I think that we may know
Where the rankest nettles grow,
And where oak and ivy weave
Crimson glories to deceive.

Now the merry days are over!
Woodland - tenants seek their cover,
And the swallow leaves again
For his castle-nests in Spain.

Shut the door, and close the blind:
We shall have the bitter wind,
We shall have the dreary rain
Striving, driving at the pane.

Send the ruddy fire - light higher;
Draw your easy chair up nigher;
Through the winter, bleak and chill,
We may have our summer still.

Here are poems we may read,
Pleasant fancies to our need:
Ah, eternal summer-time,
Dwells within the poet's rhyme!

All the birds' sweet melodies
Linger in these songs of his;
And the blossoms of all ages
Waft their fragrance from his pages.
...

To Edmund Clarence Stedman on his seventieth birthday, October 8,1903


Who wears this crown-greater than kings may wear-
Is monarch of a kingdom, once possessed,
Nor foe nor fate from him may ever wrest!
Illimitable as space is, and as fair
As its illumined depths, he gathers there
All things, obedient to his high behest.
His is the sea, the valley's verdant breast,
And his the mountain-summit, lost in air.

Thought's infinite range to him no barrier bars;
His soul no boundary knows of time or space;
Bird, beast, flower, tree, to him in love belong;
Child of the earth, yet kindred to the stars,
He walks in dreams with angels face to face,
And God Himself speaks in his voice of song.
...

O WINDS, that ripple the long grass!
O winds, that kiss the jeweled sea!
Grow still and lingering as you pass
About this laurel tree.

Great Shasta knew you in the cloud
That turbans his white brow; the sweet,
Cool rivers; and the woods that bowed
Before your pinions fleet.

With meadow scents your breath is rife;
With red - wood odors, and with pine:
Now pause and thrill with twofold life,
Each spicy leaf I twine.

The laurel grows upon the hill
That looks across the western sea.
O winds, within the boughs be still,
O sun, shine tenderly,

And birds, sing soft about your nests:
I twine a wreath for other lands;
A grave! nor wife nor child has blest
With touch of loving hands.

Where eyes are closed, divine and young,
Dusked in a night no morn may break,
And hushed the poet lips that sung,
The songs none else may wake:

Unfelt the venomed arrow-thrust,
Unheard the lips that hiss disgrace,
While the sad heart is dust, and dust
The beautiful, sad face!

For him I pluck the laurel crown!
It ripened in the western breeze,
Where Saucelito's hills look down
Upon the golden seas;

And sunlight lingered in its leaves
From dawn, until the scarce dimmed sky
Changed to the light of stars; and waves
Sang to it constantly.

I weave, and strive to weave a tone,
A touch, that, somehow, when it lies
Upon his sacred dust, alone,
Beneath the English skies,

The sunshine of the arch it knew,
The calm that wrapt its native hill,
The love that wreathed its glossy hue,
May breathe around it still!
...

Robin sang a song for me
Once upon a day,
Never throat of Robin piped
Bonnier roundelay!

Robin built a home for him
In the apple-boughs;
There with wife and family
Kept he merry house.

But my Robin, overseas,
Where is song of his?
When that golden rapture breaks
The long silences?

O my lonely walls, no more
Glorious with sound!
Broken roof and rafter, mine,
Prone upon the ground!

What to me the nested tree,
Linnet, lark and wren?
Song that with my Robin dies
Never wakes again!
...

IN a garden that I know,
Only palest blossoms blow.

There the lily, purest nun,
Hides her white face from the sun,

And the maiden rose-bud stirs
In a garment fair as hers.

One shy bird, with folded wings,
Sits within the leaves and sings;

Sits and sings the daylight long,
Just a patient plaintive song.

Other gardens greet the spring
With a blaze of blossoming;

Other song-birds, piping clear,
Chorus from the branches near:

But my blossoms, palest known,
Bloom for me and me alone;

And my bird, though sad and lonely,
Sings for me, and for me only.
...

Just to make Pancho jealous-ay de mi! -
With Juan I flittered. I cared not for Juan,
Yet talked, laughed, danced with him, just but to see
My Pancho's eyes grow flame as he looked on.

Padre, it is the woman's way, you know-
And I'm but woman: Si, 'with fire to play.'
What would you? Could I dream ‘twould madden so?
Ah, God! the fires of hell are mine today!

‘Twas in the moonlight, in the garden where'
The roses bloom the thickest, night half sped,
And Juan had placed a rose bud in my hair-
There was a flash of steel, and Juan lay dead.

Mary! Madonna! Help Thou me this day!
Pancho I loved-him only, Mother Divine! . . .
And Juan is dead. . . O Padre mio, pray!
Pray for my soul, for Pancho's soul and mine!
...

CHEEKS of an ominous crimson,
Eye-brows arched to a frown,
Pretty red lips a-quiver
With holding their sweetness down;
Glance that is never lifted
From the hands that, in cruel play.
Are tearing the white-rose petals,
And tossing their hearts away.
Only to think that a whisper,
An idle, meaningless jest,
Should stir such a world of passion
In a dear, little, loving breast!
Yet ever for such light trifles
Will lover and lass fall out,
And the humblest lad-grow haughty,
And the gentlest maiden pout.
Of course, I must sue for pardon;
For what I can hardly say !—
But, deaf to opposing reason,
A woman will have her way.
And when, in despite her frowning,
The scorn, the grief, and the rue,
She looks so bewitchingly pretty,
Why, what can a fellow do?
...

Who say these walls are lonely-these-
They may not see the motley throng
That people it, as thick as bees
The scented clover beds among.

They may not hear, when footfalls cease,
And living voices, for awhile,
The speech, in many tongues and keys,
Adown each shadowy aisle.

Here are the friends that ne'er betray;
Companionship that never tires;
Here voices call from voiceless clay,
And ashes dead renew their fires.

For death can touch the flesh alone;
Immortal thought, from age to age
Lives on, and here, in varied tone,
It speaks from many a page.

Here searching History waits- the deeds
Of man and nation to rehearse:
Here clear-eyed Science walk and reads
The secrets of the universe.

Here lands and seas, from pole to pole,
The traveler spreads before the eye;
Here Faith unfolds her mystic scroll
The soul to satisfy.

Here Homer chants heroic Troy,
Here Dante strikes the harp in pain,
Here Shakespeare sounds the grief, the joy,
Of all human life and strain.

Alone and silent? Why, ‘tis rife
With form and sound! The hosts of thought
Are dwellers here; and thought is life.
Without it earth and man are not.

To war and statecraft leave the bay-
A greater crown to these belongs;
The rulers of the world are they
Who make its books and songs.
...