One touch of you were worth a thousand creeds. My wound is numb Through toil-pressed day, but all night long it bleeds In aching dreams, and still you cannot come.

I would not ask you if those golden spheres In love rejoice, If only our stained star hath sin and tears, But fill my famished hearing with your voice.

If You Could Come My love, my love, if you could come once more From your high place, I would not question you for heavenly lore, But, silent, take the comfort of your face.

Bates remained at Wellesley until she retired in 1925. She died four years later, at the age of 70. Only a few years before her death, she wrote to a friend, "So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not."

In 1912, Coman was diagnosed with cancer, and Bates nursed her until Coman died in 1915. In 1922, Bates published a limited volume of poetry entitled, "Yellow Clover," where she wrote of their relationship.

Both women had successful careers at Wellesley college--Bates became chair of the English department, while Coman became chair of the Economics Department and Dean of the college. They kept contact with other educated women who lived in couples as they did, but they did not assume roles as lesbian activists.

Bates and Coman's relationship might be best described as a romantic friendship. It is not clear whether their relationship was sexual, but it was intensely loving; Bates referred to Coman as her "Joy of Life" and wrote many poems about their love.

Katharine Lee Bates was an ardent feminist and the author of the song "America the Beautiful." She attended Wellesley college and later returned to join the faculty. While on staff she met Katharine Coman and began a relationship that lasted for 25 years.

Bates dedicated her book Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, to Katharine Coman. Much of the poetry contained therein refers to her relationship with Coman. Bates shared many years with her companion, Coman, who was a professor, department chair and dean at Wellesley College . Yellow Clover Must I, who walk alone,

Come on it still,

This Puck of plants

The wise would do away with,

The sunshine slants

To play with,

Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover, Which once in parting for a time

That then seemed long,

Ere time for you was over,

We sealed our own?

Do you remember yet,

O Soul beyond the stars,

Beyond the uttermost dim bars

Of space,

Dear Soul who found the earth sweet,

Remember by love's grace,

In dreamy hushes of heavenly song,

How suddenly we halted in our climb,

Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,

Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,

And gave them as a token

Each to each,

In lieu of speech,

In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,

Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet

With a strange dew of tears? So it began,

This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,

To be our tenderest language. All the years

It lent a new zest to the summer hours,

As each of us went scheming to surprise

The other with our homely, laureate flowers,

Sonnets and odes,

Fringing our daily roads.

Can amaranth and asphodel

Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?

Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,

Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,

Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,

Simplicities of mirth,

Must follow them above

With touches of vague homesickness that pass

Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.

How oft, beneath some foreign arch of sky,

The rover,

You or I,

For life oft sundered look from look,

And voice from voice, the transient dearth

Schooling my soul to brook

This distance that no messages may span

Would chance

Upon our wilding by a lonely well,

Or drowsy watermill,

Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,

Or where the nightingales of old romance

With tragical contraltos fill

Dim solitudes of infinite desire;

And once I joyed to meet

Our peasant gadabout

A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,

Twinkling a saucy eye

As potentates paced by. Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame

From friendship's altar fire!

How proudly we would pluck and tame

The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!

How swiftly they were sent

Far, far away

On journeys wide

By sea and continent,

Green miles and blue leagues over,

From each of us to each,

That so our hearts might reach

And touch within the yellow clover,

Love's letter to be glad about

Like sunshine when it came! My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;

Let love then make me brave

To bear the keen hurts of

This careless summertide,

Ay, of our own poor flower,

Changed with our fatal hour,

For all its sunshine vanished when you died.

Only white cover blossoms on your grave.