A Few More Verses. Susan Coolidge

rank and poisonous growths, and cast

      Fresh seeds to work elsewhere.

      The speakers of the words

      Passed by and marked, one day,

      The fragrant blossoms dewy wet,

      The baneful flowers thickly set

      In clustering array.

      And neither knew his word;

      One smiled, and one did sigh.

      “How strange and sad,” one said, “it is

      People should do such things as this!

      I’m glad it was not I.”

      And, “What a wondrous word

      To reach so far, so high!”

      The other said, “What joy ’twould be

      To send out words so helpfully!

      I wish that it were I.”

INFLUENCE.

       Table of Contents

      COUCHED in the rocky lap of hills,

      The lake’s blue waters gleam,

      And thence in linked and measured rills

      Down to the valley stream,

      To rise again, led higher and higher,

      And slake the city’s hot desire.

      High as the lake’s bright ripples shine,

      So high the water goes,

      But not a drop that air-drawn line

      Passes or overflows;

      Though man may strive and man may woo,

      The stream to its own law is true.

      Vainly the lonely tarn its cup

      Holds to the feeding skies;

      Unless the source be lifted up,

      The streamlet cannot rise:

      By law inexorably blent,

      Each is the other’s measurement.

      Ah, lonely tarn! ah, striving rill!

      So yearn these souls of ours,

      And beat with sad and urgent will

      Against the unheeding powers.

      In vain is longing, vain is force;

      No stream goes higher than its source.