Dying offers life its noblest part

Evelyn lost her father before her second birthday and her mother and sister in the two years before her twenty-ninth birthday. Grief and death weave their sad pattern through many of her poems. Her Catholic faith was the balancing factor that carried her through those griefs, never erasing them but rather embroidering them with motifs that allowed her not only to endure, but to do so with grace and sometimes even joy.

Behold the Roses

Still? Oh, never still, the singing voice
That balanced on warm waves of sound as birds
In spring upon the swelling oak rejoice,
And frame their ardor in no wreath of words.
The day is beauteous, and the heavens play.
But hungry earth has need of this new gold
That once was flesh we loved. No mortal clay
Has shaped the song or struck the holy mould.
Behold the roses, swinging on the vine . . . . .
Their waking day is brief; the winter long,
All-patient earth will fold their petaled wine
Within her press to recreate their song.

Leavened, the spirit; glad, the noble heart;
For dying offers life its noblest part!

Evelyn Coffey

(later titled “To Peg”)