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.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD