Helen Angell Goodwin. Born - not made - may be truly said of our talented Class poet; Helen Angell Goodwin. It was my privilege to be better acquainted with her, without doubt, and to see her more often in the years following her graduation, than any other member of the Class of '71. The traits that we knew and loved in her girlhood days remained with her thro life. The same modest, retiring disposition, and the same buoyancy of spirit that made her cheerful amid all difficulties and troubles will ever be remembered. During the early years of her married life, her name was often before the public as a poet of merit. Her poems were published on the first pages of the Congregationalist and the Independent.
There was a time, when her household and family cares had increased, that she found no time for writing, but the Muse did not entirely forsake her, and was only poising her wings for a loftier flight, as was shown in the products of her later years. Among these may be included "Beyond the Bar."
Beyond the Bar. From the list of my correspondents
I have stricken a name to-day.
No letter can ever reach her;
She has gone so far away.
So far thro the shadowy spaces
Whence never a sign comes back;
So far o'er the twilight waters
Whose mirrors retain no track.No miner or mountain climber
No sailor on any sea,
No desert or forest ranger
Can take her a word from me.
No search in the earth's foundations
'Mong relics of things that were,
No airship nor submarine passage
Can carry me nearer her.Science with multiple lenses
May capture comet or star,
May make, from a drop, an ocean
And harness strange fires to her car.
Science may fathom earth's forces,
May find how the flowers bloom,
May solve all the riddles of life,
But Science stops at the tomb.Yet of life - not death, - the grasses
Are whispering over her grave,
And the vanished lives are hidden
Safely with Him who gave.
For our field of buried treasure
He bought, at the utmost price,
And not one gem shall be missing
From the homes of Paradise.