Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. | Page 3

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.
"And what am I to you? A steady hand
To hold, a steadfast heart to
trust withal;
Merely a man that loves you, and will stand
By you, whatever befall.
"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 refinèd gold!
Then shall I drink this draft of oxymel,
Part sweet, part sharp? Myself
o'erprized to know
Is sharp;