the intense appreciation of natural beauty generally—a tender love for flowers and birds; for golden dawns and rose sunsets—which is so frequently apparent in her verse.
VIEW OF A SMALL SLEEPING CABIN AND ONE OF THE TENTS
This shows the wildness and woodsiness of the surroundings of Camp Elsinore
To come down to more concrete examples, two pieces in the collection "Poems," first published in 1898 and recently issued in a new and revised edition, are named by Mrs. Coates as being especially interpretative of the beauty of the country about Camp Elsinore and of the satisfaction of life there. One of these is a sonnet, "Morning."
I woke and heard the thrushes sing at dawn,—
A strangely blissful burst of melody,
A chant of rare, exultant certainty,
Fragrant, as springtime breaths, of wood and lawn.
Night's eastern curtains still were closely drawn;
No roseate flush predicted pomps to be,
Or spoke of morning loveliness to me,
But, for those happy birds, the night was gone!
Darkling they sang, nor guessed what care consumes
Man's questioning spirit; heedless of decay,
They sang of joy and dew-embalmed blooms.
My doubts grew still, doubts seemed so poor while they,
Sweet worshipers of light, from leafy glooms
Poured forth transporting prophecies of day.
"There's a Spot in the Mountains" has a lighter, more joyous note, and is probably in keeping with the spirit of golden days, made up of blue sky, clear waters, wooded hills and the murmur of light breezes in thickly-growing forest-lands.
In all of Mrs. Coates' work the love of Nature is clearly revealed. Her most musical and most spontaneous poems are those in which the inspiration has been found in some manifestation of Nature-life—songs after the Elizabethan manner, reflective verses in which the symbols used are flowers—into much of her work, this spirit of Nature enters, with tender appreciation and the love that sees a meaning and a message beneath the exterior form.
