Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Lyrical and Other Poems. III. DividedJean Ingelow (1820–1897)
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
’Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.
And short dry grass under foot is brown;
But one little streak at a distance lieth
Green like a ribbon to prank the down.
And God He knoweth how blithe we were!
Never a voice to bid us eschew it:
Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
Light was our talk as of faëry bells—
Faëry wedding-bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.
We lapped the grass on that youngling spring;
Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover,
And said, ‘Let us follow it westering.’
Circling above us the black rooks fly
Forward, backward; lo, their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry—
As hair from a maid’s bright eyes blown back:
And, lo, the sun like a lover darteth
His flattering smile on her wayward track.
Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
On either brink we go hand in hand.
On either margin, our songs all done,
We move apart, while she singeth ever,
Taking the course of the stooping sun.
I cry ‘Return’—but he cannot come:
We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow;
Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb.
A little talking of outward things:
The careless beck is a merry dancer,
Keeping sweet time to the air she sings.
‘Cross to me now—for her wavelets swell;’
‘I may not cross’—and the voice beside her
Faintly reacheth, though heeded well.
No second crossing that ripple’s flow:
‘Come to me now, for the west is burning;
Come ere it darkens;—Ah, no! ah, no!’
The beck grows wider and swift and deep:
Passionate words as of one beseeching—
The loud beck drowns them; we walk, and weep.
A tired queen with her state oppressed,
Low by rushes and swordgrass stooping,
Lies she soft on the waves at rest.
Her earth will weep her some dewy tears;
The wild beck ends her tune of gladness,
And goeth stilly as soul that fears.
On either marge of the moonlit flood,
With the moon’s own sadness in our faces,
Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring,
A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.
Round valleys like nests all ferny lined;
Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered,
Swell high in their freckled robes behind.
When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide;
A flashing edge for the milk-white river,
The beck, a river—with still sleek tide.
On she goes under fruit-laden trees
Sunk in leafage cooeth the culver,
And ’plaineth of love’s disloyalties.
Up comes the lily and dries her bell;
But two are walking apart for ever,
And wave their hands for a mute farewell.
The river hasteth, her banks recede:
Wing-like sails on her bosom gliding
Bear down the lily and drown the reed.
(Shouts of mariners winnow the air),
And level sands for banks endowing
The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair.
And crowds are passing, and banks stretch wide
How hard to follow, with lips that quiver,
That moving speck on the far-off side!
My eyes brim over, it melts away:
Only my heart to my heart shall show it
As I walk desolate day by day.
A knowledge greater than grief can dim—
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly—
Yea, better—e’en better than I love him.
The awful river so dread to see,
I say ‘Thy breadth and thy depth for ever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.