Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. | Page 6

mine.?And still thy yearning and resolve thy doubt??That which I know, and that which I divine,
Alas! have left thee out.
I have aspired to know the might of God,?As if the story of His love was furled,?Nor sacred foot the grasses e'er had trod
Of this redeem��d world:--
Have sunk my thoughts as lead into the deep,?To grope for that abyss whence evil grew,?And spirits of ill, with eyes that cannot weep,
Hungry and desolate flew;
As if their legions did not one day crowd?The death-pangs of the Conquering Good to see!?As if a sacred head had never bowed
In death for man--for me;
Nor ransomed back the souls beloved, the sons?Of men, from thraldom with the nether kings?In that dark country where those evil ones
Trail their unhallowed wings.
And didst Thou love the race that loved not Thee,?And didst Thou take to heaven a human brow??Dost plead with man's voice by the marvellous sea?
Art Thou his kinsman now?
O God, O kinsman loved, but not enough!?O man, with eyes majestic after death,?Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
Whose lips drawn human breath!
By that one likeness which is ours and Thine,?By that one nature which doth hold us kin,?By that high heaven where, sinless, Thou dost shine
To draw us sinners in,
By Thy last silence in the judgment-hall,?By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree,?By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall,
I pray Thee visit me.
Come, lest this heart should, cold and cast away,?Die ere the guest adored she entertain--?Lest eyes which never saw Thine earthly day
Should miss Thy heavenly reign.
Come, weary-eyed from seeking in the night?Thy wanderers strayed upon the pathless wold,?Who wounded, dying, cry to Thee for light,
And cannot find their fold.
And deign, O Watcher, with the sleepless brow,?Pathetic in its yearning--deign reply:?Is there, O is there aught that such as Thou
Wouldst take from such as I?
Are there no briers across Thy pathway thrust??Are there no thorns that compass it about??Nor any stones that Thou wilt deign to trust
My hands to gather out?
O if Thou wilt, and if such bliss might be,?It were a cure for doubt, regret, delay--?Let my lost pathway go--what aileth me?--
There is a better way.
What though unmarked the happy workman toil,?And break unthanked of man the stubborn clod??It is enough, for sacred is the soil,
Dear are the hills of God.
Far better in its place the lowliest bird?Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song,?Than that a seraph strayed should take the word
And sing His glory wrong.
Friend, it is time to work. I say to thee,?Thou dost all earthly good by much excel;?Thou and God's blessing are enough for me:
My work, my work--farewell!
REQUIESCAT IN PACE!
My heart is sick awishing and awaiting:?The lad took up his knapsack, he went, he went his way;?And I looked on for his coming, as a prisoner through the grating Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day.
On the wild purple mountains, all alone with no other,?The strong terrible mountains he longed, he longed to be; And he stooped to kiss his father, and he stooped to kiss his mother, And till I said, "Adieu, sweet Sir," he quite forgot me.
He wrote of their white raiment, the ghostly capes that screen them, Of the storm winds that beat them, their thunder-rents and scars, And the paradise of purple, and the golden slopes atween them, And fields, where grow God's gentian bells, and His crocus stars.
He wrote of frail gauzy clouds, that drop on them like fleeces, And make green their fir forests, and feed their mosses hoar; Or come sailing up the valleys, and get wrecked and go to pieces, Like sloops against their cruel strength: then he wrote no more.
O the silence that came next, the patience and long aching! They never said so much as "He was a dear loved son;"?Not the father to the mother moaned, that dreary stillness breaking: "Ah! wherefore did he leave us so--this, our only one."
They sat within, as waiting, until the neighbors prayed them, At Cromer, by the sea-coast, 'twere peace and change to be; And to Cromer, in their patience, or that urgency affrayed them, Or because the tidings tarried, they came, and took me.
It was three months and over since the dear lad had started: On the green downs at Cromer I sat to see the view;?On an open space of herbage, where the ling and fern had parted, Betwixt the tall white lighthouse towers, the old and the new.
Below me lay the wide sea, the scarlet sun was stooping,?And he dyed the waste water, as with a scarlet dye;?And he dyed the lighthouse towers; every bird with white wing swooping Took his colors, and the cliffs did, and the yawning sky.
Over grass came that strange flush, and over ling and heather, Over flocks of sheep and lambs, and over Cromer town;?And each filmy cloudlet crossing drifted like