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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Susan Coolidge

  • All green and fair the Summer lies,
  • Just budded from the bud of Spring,
  • With tender blue of wistful skies,
  • And winds which softly sing.
  • All night the thirsty beach has listening lain
  • With patience dumb,
  • Counting the slow, sad moments or her pain;
  • Now morn has come,
  • And with the morn the punctual tide again.
  • Every day is a fresh beginning,
  • Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
  • And spite of old sorrow, and older sinning,
  • And troubles forecasted, and possible pain,
  • Take heart with the day, and begin again.
  • Every Fern is tucked and set,
  • ’Neath coverlet,
  • Downy and soft and warm.
  • Every tear is answered by a blossom,
  • Every sigh with songs and laughter blent,
  • Apple-blooms upon the breezes toss them,
  • April knows her own, and is content.
  • In the deep shadow of the porch
  • A slender bind-weed springs,
  • And climbs, like airy acrobat,
  • The trellises, and swings
  • And dances in the golden sun
  • In fairy loops and rings.
  • Men die, but sorrow never dies;
  • The crowding years divide in vain,
  • And the wide world is knit with ties
  • Of common brotherhood in pain.
  • Now the last red ray is gone;
  • Now the twilight shadows hie.
  • The punctual tide draws up the bay,
  • With ripple of wave and hiss of spray.
  • They know the time to go!
  • The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
  • In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
  • Bows at the signal an obedient head
  • And hastes to bed.
  • We ring the bells and we raise the strain,
  • We hang up garlands everywhere
  • And bid the tapers twinkle fair,
  • And feast and frolic—and then we go
  • Back to the same old lives again.
  • All green and fair the summer lies, just budded from the bud of spring.

    O word and thing most beautiful!

    The sobbing wind is fierce and strong; its cry is like a human wail.