HENRY JAMES, a poem

Read by Mrs. Coates at a meeting of the Browning Society on Thursday, March 2nd, 1916 on the death (28 February 1916) of Henry James:

YOU were not of one country. To one Race,
     Rather, you gave your spirit's full devotion.
Careless a little as to bounds of space
     Set by dividing hill or severing ocean,
An exiled patriot, wherever dwelling,
     An alien on either side the sea,
You gave your loyalty, through love's compelling,
     To English speech and English liberty.

We claim you—both, drawn closer through your coming,
     England and she that nursed you at her breast.
Beauty you loved, and ne'er from truth went roaming,
     Through all the long desire, the ardent quest.
Ah, never quite at home, but ever homing,
     Passionate pilgrim, you have found your rest!

"Henry James" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Poems (1916) Volume II.

On the "People's Poet"

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On 27 February 1907, Mrs. Coates attended a dinner celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at the National Arts Club in New York. Mrs. Coates' poem, "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," was published in Harper's Weekly a few days later in the 2 March 1907 issue:

If tasting Heliconian springs
     He of their waters drank not deep,
If, smiling, he beheld not things
     Revealed to eyes that weep,
If dread Dodona's Oracle
     And Delphi's voice for him were mute,
If grave Minerva in his path
     Dropped never silver flute,— 

Yet beauty wove a magic spell
     For him, and early, at his need,
Upon a bed of asphodel
     He found a tuneful reed,—
The Syrinx-reed Thessalian,
     Of plaintive, far renown,
The universal pipe of Pan,—
     Where the god laid it down.

Right reverently from the ground
     He lifted up the sacred thing,
Accepted it with awe profound,
     With faith unfaltering;
And when its music forth he drew
     Earth half forgot her ancient pain,
For Marsyas himself ne'er blew
     A purer, sweeter strain!

What though there be who self-attired
     In robes of judgment some misuse,
Protest that he was not inspired
     By the authentic Muse,—
Love, granting all his faults to these,
     Forever holds his name apart,
Who moved not senseless stones and trees,
     But the quick human heart.

"The people's poet." Did he lack
     Return? He served in his degree
The people, and they gave him back
     Their immortality!
Time careless grows of costly wit,
     Brave monuments are quickly gone,—
But that which on the heart is writ
     Lives on, and on, and on!

Subsequently published in Lyrics of Life (1909) and Poems (1916) Volume II, with changes to text.

CONFLICT AND REST, a poem

THROUGH the long voyage we may welcome day,
     Glad when the night is gone,
So many threat'ning perils of the way
     Vanish before the dawn;

And yet a deeper darkness we may crave
     When strife indeed is past,
And we from stress of tempest and of wave
     Are nearing port at last.

"Conflict and Rest" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Lyrics of Life (1909).

TRANSITION, a poem

AWAKE my soul!
     Thou shalt not creep and crawl—
     An earth-bound creature, pitiful and small,
Whose weak ambition knows no higher goal!
O wistful soul,

When morning sings,
     Forgetful of the night,
     Bathe all thy restless being in the light;
Till 'neath the mesh that close about thee clings
Thou feel thy wings!

Then find life's door,—
     Trusting the instinct true
     That points to Heaven and the aerial blue,
A wingèd thing impelled forevermore
To soar and soar!

"Transition" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Harper's Monthly Magazine (February 1902), Mine and Thine (1904) and Poems (1916) Volume I.

SECURE, a poem

OUR single lives are circled round
     By an embracing sea;
Are joined to all that has been, bound
     To all that is to be;
The past and future meet and cross,
And in life's ocean is no loss.

We know there is no loss—and yet—
     Dismayed, perplexed,—poor dupes of time—
     We see youth stricken ere its prime,
And in our grief forget.
But pitying Nature takes our part:
Slowly she heals the breaking heart,

And Sorrow's self procures us gain;
     For in her steps ascending higher,
We come, at last, where waits nor pain
     Nor unfulfilled desire,—
Finding the path lit from above
That leads from love—to Love!

Nothing is premature with God:
     His are the harvest-time and sowing,
The seedling nestled in the sod,
     The flower in beauty blowing,
The languid ebb, the eager flow,
The pulse of spring, the brooding snow.

"Secure" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Independent (16 February 1911), The Unconquered Air (1912) and Poems (1916) Volume II.

SELF-CONFIDENT YOUTH, a poem

THE earth is mine and its myriad flowers,
     And the stars are mine: I shall count them all;
As I hasten on with expanding powers,
     No cloud-capped peak shall my strength appal.

I will measure my might 'gainst the might of Ocean,
     In ships of my building, its wastes will dare;
I will learn of the swallow its swift-winged motion,
     And ride as it rides, through the fields of Air! . . .

I marvel my fathers have been contented
     To live and to labor in ways time-worn:
That to Fate's denials they e'er consented,
     Solaced by trifles my soul would scorn!

For the tired old world I will write a story
     That none of her children has told before:
A tale of adventure and love, whose glory
     Shall glow in her annals forevermore.

To the depths, to the heights I am called to inherit,
     I will climb, will descend, without fear of fall,
In the perilous joy of a dauntless spirit
     That nothing shall have—if it have not All!

"Self-confident Youth" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (January 1915) and Poems (1916) Volume II.

CONSCIENCE, a poem

THE friend I loved betrayed my trust
And bowed my spirit to the dust.
I keep the hurt he gave, yet know
He was forgiven long ago.

From him I did not merit ill,
But I would bear injustice still,
Content, could years of guiltless woe
Undo the wrong I did my foe.

"Conscience" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (May 1894), Poems (1898) and Poems (1916) Volume II.