Sappho
As a wan weaver in an attic dim,
Hopeless yet patient, so he may be fed
With scanty store of sorrow-seasoned bread,
Heareth a blithe bird carol over him,
And sees no longer walls and rafters grim,
But rural lanes where little feet are led
Through springing flowers, fields with clover
spread,
Clouds, swan-like, that o'er depths of azure
swim,—
So, when upon our earth-dulled ear new breaks
Some fragment, Sappho, of thy skyey song,
A noble wonder in our souls awakes;
The deathless Beautiful draws strangely nigh,
And we look up, and marvel how so long
We were content to drudge for sordid joys that
die.
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Let Me Believe
Let me believe you, love, or let me die!
If on your faith I may not rest secure,—
Beyond all chance of peradventure sure,—
Trusting your half-avowals sweet and shy,
As trusts the lark the pallid, dawn-lit sky,—
Then would I rather in some grave obscure
Repose forlorn, than, living on, endure
A question each dear transport to belie!
It is a pain to thirst and do without,
A pain to suffer what we deem unjust,
To win a joy—and lay it in the dust;
But there's a fiercer pain,—the pain of doubt:
From other griefs Death sets the spirit free;
Doubt steals the light from immortality!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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He and I
He and I,—and that was all,—
The boundless world had grown so small:
So small, so narrow in content,
So single in possession sweet,
So personal, so love-complete,
So still, so eloquent!
He and I,—and Earth made new!
The flowers blossomed for us two,
And birds, to voice our rapture, sung
Divinely 'neath our northern skies,
As sung the birds in Paradise
When life and love were young!
He and I,—O aching heart!—
Only a narrow grave apart!
Yet seeking for his face in vain,
How changed, to me, the world has grown;
How cold it seems, how strange, how lone,
How infinite in pain!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Though Thou Hast Climbed
Though thou hast climbed, by patient effort slow,
O'er barriers that thy course denied,
And from proud summits gazest down below—
Self satisfied;
Though thou hast felt the clouds beneath thy feet,
And to past triumphs fond returning,
Wakest no more, sublimer heights to greet
With upward yearning,—
Better for thee hadst thou been taught to bow,
Through lengthening years of blest probation,
Looking to something loftier than thou,
In adoration:
Better for thee had thine unconquered will,
So scornful of restraining bars—
Been held earth's captive thrall, thy strivings still
Unto the Stars!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Du Maurier
Two rocked his infant cradle as he slept,
And crooned for him their native lullabies.
One gave her sense of beauty to his eyes,
One taught his heart her smiles, the tears she
wept.
Each made him love her as the child his home,
And, mother-wise, reclaimed his wandering
glance:
Beloved England and beloved France,—
Each drew him, though, afar, he could not come.
In his imagination, fleur-de-lis
And English daisy blossomed side by side,
And dreams were his, lost transports to renew.
Half exiled wheresoe'er he chanced to be,
Like migrant birds his thoughts went soaring
wide,
Wooed onward by the vision of the True!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Autumn
"We ne'er will part!" Ah me, what plaintive sounds
Are human protests! Dear one, lift your eyes!
Behold the solemn, widespread prophecies
Of that whose shadow all our light confounds,
Of that whose being all our knowledge bounds!
Far from the faded fields the robin flies,
Upon her stem the last rose droops and dies,
And through the pines a doomful blast resounds.
As dawn is portent of the day's decline,
As joy is prelude sweet to waiting sorrow,
So ripened good is Nature's harvest sign:
Love, only, the immortal strain doth borrow,
And, high exalted by a hope divine,
Still whispers in the night of death,—Tomorrow!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Siberia
The night-wind drives across the leaden skies,
And fans the brooding earth with icy wings;
Against the coast loud-booming billows flings,
And soughs through forest-deeps with moaning sighs.
Above the gorge, where snow, deep fallen, lies—
A softness lending e'en to savage things—
Above the gelid source of mountain springs,
A solitary eagle, circling, flies.
O pathless woods, O isolating sea,
O steppes interminable, hopeless, cold,
O grievous distances, imagine ye,
Imprisoned here, the human soul to hold?
Free, in a dungeon,—as yon falcon free,—
It soars beyond your ken, its loved ones to infold!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Achilles
When, with a mortal mother's helpless tears,
Thetis, the silver-footed, to her son
Revealed the choice in death he might not shun;
The goddess-born, longing for lengthened years
In his own land, with all that life endears—
Renounced Earth's breathing pleasures new begun,
And chose to die in youth, each conflict won,
Leaving a fame no blight autumnal sears.
The Argives sleep, the Trojan hosts are dumb,
And no man knows where Homer's ashes be;
Yet, echoing down the list'ning ages, come—
E'en to this distant nineteenth century—
The hero's words by warlike Ilium,
And strengthen others in their need, and me!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Land of Promise
Although the faiths to which we fearful clung
Fall from us, or no more have might to save;
Although the past, recalling gifts it gave,
O'er lost delights a doleful knell have rung;
Although the present, forth from ashes sprung,
Postpone from day to day what most we crave,
And, promising, beguile us to the grave,—
Yet, toward the Future, we are always young!
It smiles upon us in last lingering hours,
If with less radiance, with a light as fair,
As tender, pure, as in our childish years:
It is the fairy realm of fadeless flowers,
Of songs and ever-springing fountains, where
No heart-aches come, no vain regrets, no tears!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Suppliant
Father, I lift my hands to Thee:
Reject me not!
Mine eyes are blind, I cannot see.
Be Thou the lamp unto my feet,—
Guide to the rock of my retreat;
O Light, my darkness cries to Thee!
Reject me not!
Father, mine eyes with tears are wet,
Reject me not!
Though Thou forgive, shall I forget?
Nay, though thy mercy fall like rain,
My spirit still must bear the pain
And burden of a vast regret.
Reject me not!
To whom, unfriended, should I flee?
Reject me not!
To whom, my Father, but to Thee?—
Ah! 'T was thy child forgave the sin
[...] Read more
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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