The following quotes and poetry were written by, for or about

Charlotte Cushman

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.---Charlotte Cushman (on acting)

There is a God! the sky his presence shares,
His hand upheaves the billows in their mirth,
Destroys the mighty, yet the humble spares
And with contentment crowns the thought of worth.

---Charlotte Cushman (There is a God)

At First. To Charlotte Cushman.
(By: Sidney Lanier)

My crippled sense fares bow’d along
His uncompanioned way,
And wronged by death pays life with wrong
And I wake by night and dream by day.

And the Morning seems but fatigued Night
That hath wept his visage pale,
And the healthy mark ‘twixt dark and light
In sickly sameness out doth fail

And the woods stare strange, and the wind is dumb,
---O Wind, pray talk again---
And the Hand of the Frost spreads stark and numb
As Death’s on the deadened window-pane.

Still dumb, thou Wind, old voluble friend?
And the middle of the day is cold,
And the heart of eve beats lax i’ the end
As a legend’s climax poorly told.
Oh vain the up-straining of the hands
In the chamber late at night,
Oh vain the complainings, the hot demands,
The prayers for a sound, the tears for a sight.

No word from over the starry line,
No motion felt in the dark,
And never a day gives ever a sign
Or a dream sets seal with palpable mark.

And O my God, how slight it were,
How nothing, thou All! to thee,
That a kiss or a whisper might fall from her
Down by the way of Time to me:

Or some least grace of the body of love,
---Mere wafture of floating-by,
Mere sense of unseen smiling above,
Mere hint sincere of a large blue eye,

Mere dim receipt of sad delight
From Nearness warm in the air,
What time with the passing of the night
She also passed, somehow, somewhere.

A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman.
(By: Sidney Lanier)

As Love will carve dear names upon a tree,
Symbol of gravure on his heart to be,

So thought I thine with loving text to set
In the growth and substance of my canzonet;

But, writing it, my tears begin to fall---
This wild-rose stem for thy large name’s too small!

Nay, still my trembling hands are fain, are fain
Cut the good letters though they lap again;

Perchance such folk as mark the blur and stain
Will say, ‘It was the beating of the rain;’

Or, haply these o’er-woundings of the stem
May loose some little balm, to plead for them.
Charlotte Cushman
(author unknown)

Charlotte Cushman

I.

But yesterday it was. Long years ago
It seems. The world so altered looks
to-day
That, journeying idly with my thoughts astray,
I gazed where rose one lofty peak of snow
Above grand tiers on tiers of peaks below.
One moment brief it shone, then sank away,
As swift we reached a point where foot-hills lay
So near they seemed like mountains huge to grow,
And touch the sky. That instant, idly still,
My eye fell on a printed line, and read
Incredulous, with sudden anguished thrill,
The name of this great queen among the dead.
I raised my eyes. The dusty foot-hills near
Had gone. Again the snowy peak shone clear.

II.

Oh! thou beloved woman, soul and heart
And life, thou standest unapproached and grand
As still that glorious snowy peak doth stand.
The dusty barrier our clumsy art

Charlotte Cushman.

In terror hath called death holds thee apart
From us. ‘Tis but the low foot-hill of sand.
Which bars our vision in a mountain-land.
One moment further on, and we shall start.
With speechless joy to find that we have passed
The dusky mound which shuts us from the light
Of thy great love, still quick and warm and fast,
Of thy great strengths, heroically cast,
Of thy great soul, still glowing pure and white,
Of thy great life, still pauseless, full, and bright!