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Read Ebook: Poems by Jean Ingelow In Two Volumes Volume I. by Ingelow Jean
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Ebook has 1372 lines and 90802 words, and 28 pages
"'For me this freshness in the morning hours, For me the water's clear tranquillity; For me the soft descent of chestnut flowers; The cushat's cry for me.
"'The lovely laughter of the wind-swayed wheat The easy slope of yonder pastoral hill; The sedgy brook whereby the red kine meet And wade and drink their fill.'
"Then saunter down that terrace whence the sea All fair with wing-like sails you may discern; Be glad, and say 'This beauty is for me-- A thing to love and learn.
"'For me the bounding in of tides; for me The laying bare of sands when they retreat; The purple flush of calms, the sparkling glee When waves and sunshine meet.'
"So, after gazing, homeward turn, and mount To that long chamber in the roof; there tell Your heart the laid-up lore it holds to count And prize and ponder well.
"The lookings onward of the race before It had a past to make it look behind; Its reverent wonder, and its doubting sore, Its adoration blind.
"The thunder of its war-songs, and the glow Of chants to freedom by the old world sung; The sweet love cadences that long ago Dropped from the old-world tongue.
"And then this new-world lore that takes account Of tangled star-dust; maps the triple whirl Of blue and red and argent worlds that mount And greet the IRISH EARL;
"Or float across the tube that HERSCHEL sways, Like pale-rose chaplets, or like sapphire mist; Or hang or droop along the heavenly ways, Like scarves of amethyst.
"O strange it is and wide the new-world lore, For next it treateth of our native dust! Must dig out buried monsters, and explore The green earth's fruitful crust;
"Must write the story of her seething youth-- How lizards paddled in her lukewarm seas; Must show the cones she ripened, and forsooth Count seasons on her trees;
"Must know her weight, and pry into her age, Count her old beach lines by their tidal swell; Her sunken mountains name, her craters gauge, Her cold volcanoes tell;
"And treat her as a ball, that one might pass From this hand to the other--such a ball As he could measure with a blade of grass, And say it was but small!
"Honors! O friend, I pray you bear with me: The grass hath time to grow in meadow lands, And leisurely the opal murmuring sea Breaks on her yellow sands;
"And leisurely the ring-dove on her nest Broods till her tender chick will peck the shell And leisurely down fall from ferny crest The dew-drops on the well;
"And leisurely your life and spirit grew, With yet the time to grow and ripen free: No judgment past withdraws that boon from you, Nor granteth it to me.
"Still must I plod, and still in cities moil; From precious leisure, learned leisure far, Dull my best self with handling common soil; Yet mine those honors are.
"Mine they are called; they are a name which means, 'This man had steady pulses, tranquil nerves: Here, as in other fields, the most he gleans Who works and never swerves.
"We measure not his mind; we cannot tell What lieth under, over, or beside The test we put him to; he doth excel, We know, where he is tried;
"But, if he boast some farther excellence-- Mind to create as well as to attain; To sway his peers by golden eloquence, As wind doth shift a fane;
"'To sing among the poets--we are nought: We cannot drop a line into that sea And read its fathoms off, nor gauge a thought, Nor map a simile.
"'It may be of all voices sublunar The only one he echoes we did try; We may have come upon the only star That twinkles in his sky,'
"And so it was with me." O false my friend! False, false, a random charge, a blame undue; Wrest not fair reasoning to a crooked end: False, false, as you are true!
But I read on: "And so it was with me; Your golden constellations lying apart They neither hailed nor greeted heartily, Nor noted on their chart.
"And yet to you and not to me belong Those finer instincts that, like second sight And hearing, catch creation's undersong, And see by inner light.
"You are a well, whereon I, gazing, see Reflections of the upper heavens--a well From whence come deep, deep echoes up to me-- Some underwave's low swell.
"I cannot soar into the heights you show, Nor dive among the deeps that you reveal; But it is much that high things ARE to know, That deep things ARE to feel.
"'Tis yours, not mine, to pluck out of your breast Some human truth, whose workings recondite Were unattired in words, and manifest And hold it forth to light
"And cry, 'Behold this thing that I have found,' And though they knew not of it till that day, Nor should have done with no man to expound Its meaning, yet they say,
"'We do accept it: lower than the shoals We skim, this diver went, nor did create, But find it for us deeper in our souls Than we can penetrate.'
"You were to me the world's interpreter, The man that taught me Nature's unknown tongue, And to the notes of her wild dulcimer First set sweet words, and sung.
"But need we praise his tendance tutelar Who feeds a flame that warms him? Yet 'tis true I love you for the sake of what you are, And not of what you do:--
"As heaven's high twins, whereof in Tyrian blue The one revolveth: through his course immense Might love his fellow of the damask hue, For like, and difference.
"For different pathways evermore decreed To intersect, but not to interfere; For common goal, two aspects, and one speed, One centre and one year;
"For deep affinities, for drawings strong, That by their nature each must needs exert; For loved alliance, and for union long, That stands before desert.
"And yet desert makes brighter not the less, For nearest his own star he shall not fail To think those rays unmatched for nobleness, That distance counts but pale.
"Be pale afar, since still to me you shine, And must while Nature's eldest law shall hold;"-- Ah, there's the thought which makes his random line Dear as refin?d gold!
Then shall I drink this draft of oxymel, Part sweet, part sharp? Myself o'erprized to know Is sharp; the cause is sweet, and truth to tell Few would that cause forego,
Which is, that this of all the men on earth Doth love me well enough to count me great-- To think my soul and his of equal girth-- O liberal estimate!
"Take courage"--courage! ay, my purple peer I will take courage; for thy Tyrian rays Refresh me to the heart, and strangely dear And healing is thy praise.
"Take courage," quoth he, "and respect the mind Your Maker gave, for good your fate fulfil; The fate round many hearts your own to wind." Twin soul, I will! I will!
As one who, journeying, checks the rein in haste Because a chasm doth yawn across his way Too wide for leaping, and too steeply faced For climber to essay--
As such an one, being brought to sudden stand, Doubts all his foregone path if 'twere the true, And turns to this and then to the other hand As knowing not what to do,--
So I, being checked, am with my path at strife Which led to such a chasm, and there doth end. False path! it cost me priceless years of life, My well-beloved friend.
There fell a flute when Ganymede went up-- The flute that he was wont to play upon: It dropped beside the jonquil's milk-white cup, And freckled cowslips wan--
Dropped from his heedless hand when, dazed and mute, He sailed upon the eagle's quivering wing, Aspiring, panting--aye, it dropped--the flute Erewhile a cherished thing.
Among the delicate grasses and the bells Of crocuses that spotted a rill side, I picked up such a flute, and its clear swells To my young lips replied.
I played thereon, and its response was sweet; But lo, they took from me that solacing reed. "O shame!" they said; "such music is not meet; Go up like Ganymede.
"Go up, despise these humble grassy things, Sit on the golden edge of yonder cloud." Alas! though ne'er for me those eagle wings Stooped from their eyry proud.
My flute! and flung away its echoes sleep; But as for me, my life-pulse beateth low; And like a last-year's leaf enshrouded deep Under the drifting snow,
Or like some vessel wrecked upon the sand Of torrid swamps, with all her merchandise, And left to rot betwixt the sea and land, My helpless spirit lies.
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