"Methought the stars were blinking bright,And the old brig's sails unfurled;I said, 'I will sail to my love this nightAt the other side of the world.'I stepped aboard,--we sailed so fast,--The sun shot up from the bourne;But a dove that perched upon the mastDid mourn, and mourn, and mourn.O fair dove! O fond dove!And dove with the white breast,Let me alone, the dream is my own,And my heart is full of rest."My love! He stood at my right hand,His eyes were grave and sweet.Methought he said, 'In this fair land,O, is it thus we meet?Ah, maid most dear, I am not here;I have no place,--no part,--No dwelling more by sea or shore!But only in thy heart!'O fair dove! O fond dove!Till night rose over the bourne,The dove on the mast as we sailed past,Did mourn, and mourn, and mourn."Edmund Clarence Stedman, one of the ablest and fairest among American critics, says: "As the voice of Mrs. Browning grew silent, the songs of Miss Ingelow began, and had instant and merited popularity. They sprang up suddenly and tunefully as skylarks from the daisy-spangled, hawthorn-bordered meadows of old England, with a blitheness long unknown, and in their idyllic underflights moved with the tenderest currents of human life. Miss Ingelow may be termed an idyllic lyrist, her lyrical pieces having always much idyllic beauty.High Tide, Winstanley, Songs of Seven, and the Long White Seamare lyrical treasures, and the author especially may be said to evince that sincerity which is poetry's most enduring warrant."Winstanleyis especially full of pathos and action. We watch this heroic man as he builds the lighthouse on the Eddystone rocks:--"Then he and the sea began their strife,And worked with power and might:Whatever the man reared up by dayThe sea broke down by night.* * * * *"A Scottish schooner made the portThe thirteenth day at e'en:'As I am a man,' the captain cried,'A strange sight I have seen;"'And a strange sound heard, my masters all,At sea, in the fog and the rain,Like shipwrights' hammers tapping low,Then loud, then low again."'And a stately house one instant showed,Through a rift, on the vessel's lea;What manner of creatures may be thoseThat build upon the sea?'"After the lighthouse was built, Winstanley went out again to see his precious tower. A fearful storm came up, and the tower and its builder went down together.Several books have come from Miss Ingelow's pen since 1863. The following year, Studies for Stories was published, of which the Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free from obscurity and florid language.Stories told to a Childwas published in 1865, andA Story of Doom, and Other Poems, in 1868, the principal poem being drawn from the time of the Deluge.Mopsa the Fairy, an exquisite story, followed a year later, withA Sister's Bye-hours, and since that time,Off the Skelligsin 1872,Fated to be Freein 1875,Sarah de Berengerin 1879,Don Johnin 1881, andPoems of the Old Days and the New, recently issued. Of the latter, the poet Stoddard says: "Beyond all the women of the Victorian era, she is the most of an Elizabethan.... She has tracked the ocean journeyings of Drake, Raleigh, and Frobisher, and others to whom the Spanish main was a second home, theEl Doradoof which Columbus and his followers dreamed in their stormy slumbers.... The first of her poems in this volume,Rosamund, is a masterly battle idyl."Her books have had large sale, both here and in Europe. It is stated that in this country one hundred thousand of herPoemshave been sold, and half that number of her prose works.Miss Ingelow has not been elated by her deserved success. She has told the world very little of herself in her books. She once wrote a friend: "I am far from agreeing with you 'that it is rather too bad when we read people's works, if they won't let us know anything about themselves.' I consider that an author should, during life, be as much as possible, impersonal. I never import myself into my writings, and am much better pleased that others should feel an interest in me, and wish to know something of me, than that they should complain of egotism."It is said that the last of herSongs with Preludesrefers to a brother who lies buried in Australia:--"I stand on the bridge where last we stoodWhen delicate leaves were young;The children called us from yonder wood,While a mated blackbird sung.* * * * *"But if all loved, as the few can love,This world would seldom be well;And who need wish, if he dwells above,For a deep, a long death-knell?"There are four or five, who, passing this place,While they live will name me yet;And when I am gone will think on my face,And feel a kind of regret."With all her literary work, she does not forget to do good personally. At one time she instituted a "copyright dinner," at her own expense, which she thus described to a friend: "I have set up a dinner-table for the sick poor, or rather, for such persons as are just out of the hospitals, and are hungry, and yet not strong enough to work. We have about twelve to dinner three times a week, and hope to continue the plan. It is such a comfort to see the good it does. I find it one of the great pleasures of writing, that it gives me more command of money for such purposes than falls to the lot of most women." Again, she writes to an American friend: "I should be much obliged to you if you would give in my name twenty-five dollars to some charity in Boston. I should prefer such a one as does not belong to any party in particular, such as a city infirmary or orphan school. I do not like to draw money from your country, and give none in charity."Miss Ingelow is very fond of children, and herein is, perhaps, one secret of her success. In Off the Skelligs she says: "Some people appear to feel that they are much wiser, much nearer to the truth and to realities, than they were when they were children. They think of childhood as immeasurably beneath and behind them. I have never been able to join in such a notion. It often seems to me that we lose quite as much as we gain by our lengthened sojourn here. I should not at all wonder if the thoughts of our childhood, when we look back on it after the rending of this vail of our humanity, should prove less unlike what we were intended to derive from the teaching of life, nature, and revelation, than the thoughts of our more sophisticated days."Best of all, this true woman and true poet as well, like Emerson, sees and believes in the progress of the race."Still humanity grows dearer,Being learned the more,"she says, in that tender poem,A Mother showing the Portrait of her Child. Blessed optimism! that amid all the shortcomings of human nature sees the best, lifts souls upward, and helps to make the world sunny by its singing.* * * * *Jean Ingelow died at her home in Kensington, London, July 19, 1897, at the age of sixty-seven, having been born in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1830. Her long illness ended in simple exhaustion, and she welcomed death gladly.
"Methought the stars were blinking bright,And the old brig's sails unfurled;I said, 'I will sail to my love this nightAt the other side of the world.'I stepped aboard,--we sailed so fast,--The sun shot up from the bourne;But a dove that perched upon the mastDid mourn, and mourn, and mourn.O fair dove! O fond dove!And dove with the white breast,Let me alone, the dream is my own,And my heart is full of rest."My love! He stood at my right hand,His eyes were grave and sweet.Methought he said, 'In this fair land,O, is it thus we meet?Ah, maid most dear, I am not here;I have no place,--no part,--No dwelling more by sea or shore!But only in thy heart!'O fair dove! O fond dove!Till night rose over the bourne,The dove on the mast as we sailed past,Did mourn, and mourn, and mourn."
"Methought the stars were blinking bright,And the old brig's sails unfurled;
I said, 'I will sail to my love this nightAt the other side of the world.'
I stepped aboard,--we sailed so fast,--The sun shot up from the bourne;
But a dove that perched upon the mastDid mourn, and mourn, and mourn.
O fair dove! O fond dove!And dove with the white breast,
Let me alone, the dream is my own,And my heart is full of rest.
"My love! He stood at my right hand,His eyes were grave and sweet.
Methought he said, 'In this fair land,O, is it thus we meet?
Ah, maid most dear, I am not here;I have no place,--no part,--
No dwelling more by sea or shore!But only in thy heart!'
O fair dove! O fond dove!Till night rose over the bourne,
The dove on the mast as we sailed past,Did mourn, and mourn, and mourn."
Edmund Clarence Stedman, one of the ablest and fairest among American critics, says: "As the voice of Mrs. Browning grew silent, the songs of Miss Ingelow began, and had instant and merited popularity. They sprang up suddenly and tunefully as skylarks from the daisy-spangled, hawthorn-bordered meadows of old England, with a blitheness long unknown, and in their idyllic underflights moved with the tenderest currents of human life. Miss Ingelow may be termed an idyllic lyrist, her lyrical pieces having always much idyllic beauty.High Tide, Winstanley, Songs of Seven, and the Long White Seamare lyrical treasures, and the author especially may be said to evince that sincerity which is poetry's most enduring warrant."
Winstanleyis especially full of pathos and action. We watch this heroic man as he builds the lighthouse on the Eddystone rocks:--
"Then he and the sea began their strife,And worked with power and might:Whatever the man reared up by dayThe sea broke down by night.* * * * *"A Scottish schooner made the portThe thirteenth day at e'en:'As I am a man,' the captain cried,'A strange sight I have seen;"'And a strange sound heard, my masters all,At sea, in the fog and the rain,Like shipwrights' hammers tapping low,Then loud, then low again."'And a stately house one instant showed,Through a rift, on the vessel's lea;What manner of creatures may be thoseThat build upon the sea?'"
"Then he and the sea began their strife,And worked with power and might:
Whatever the man reared up by dayThe sea broke down by night.
* * * * *
"A Scottish schooner made the portThe thirteenth day at e'en:
'As I am a man,' the captain cried,'A strange sight I have seen;
"'And a strange sound heard, my masters all,At sea, in the fog and the rain,
Like shipwrights' hammers tapping low,Then loud, then low again.
"'And a stately house one instant showed,Through a rift, on the vessel's lea;
What manner of creatures may be thoseThat build upon the sea?'"
After the lighthouse was built, Winstanley went out again to see his precious tower. A fearful storm came up, and the tower and its builder went down together.
Several books have come from Miss Ingelow's pen since 1863. The following year, Studies for Stories was published, of which the Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free from obscurity and florid language.
Stories told to a Childwas published in 1865, andA Story of Doom, and Other Poems, in 1868, the principal poem being drawn from the time of the Deluge.Mopsa the Fairy, an exquisite story, followed a year later, withA Sister's Bye-hours, and since that time,Off the Skelligsin 1872,Fated to be Freein 1875,Sarah de Berengerin 1879,Don Johnin 1881, andPoems of the Old Days and the New, recently issued. Of the latter, the poet Stoddard says: "Beyond all the women of the Victorian era, she is the most of an Elizabethan.... She has tracked the ocean journeyings of Drake, Raleigh, and Frobisher, and others to whom the Spanish main was a second home, theEl Doradoof which Columbus and his followers dreamed in their stormy slumbers.... The first of her poems in this volume,Rosamund, is a masterly battle idyl."
Her books have had large sale, both here and in Europe. It is stated that in this country one hundred thousand of herPoemshave been sold, and half that number of her prose works.
Miss Ingelow has not been elated by her deserved success. She has told the world very little of herself in her books. She once wrote a friend: "I am far from agreeing with you 'that it is rather too bad when we read people's works, if they won't let us know anything about themselves.' I consider that an author should, during life, be as much as possible, impersonal. I never import myself into my writings, and am much better pleased that others should feel an interest in me, and wish to know something of me, than that they should complain of egotism."
It is said that the last of herSongs with Preludesrefers to a brother who lies buried in Australia:--
"I stand on the bridge where last we stoodWhen delicate leaves were young;The children called us from yonder wood,While a mated blackbird sung.* * * * *"But if all loved, as the few can love,This world would seldom be well;And who need wish, if he dwells above,For a deep, a long death-knell?"There are four or five, who, passing this place,While they live will name me yet;And when I am gone will think on my face,And feel a kind of regret."
"I stand on the bridge where last we stoodWhen delicate leaves were young;
The children called us from yonder wood,While a mated blackbird sung.
* * * * *
"But if all loved, as the few can love,This world would seldom be well;
And who need wish, if he dwells above,For a deep, a long death-knell?
"There are four or five, who, passing this place,While they live will name me yet;
And when I am gone will think on my face,And feel a kind of regret."
With all her literary work, she does not forget to do good personally. At one time she instituted a "copyright dinner," at her own expense, which she thus described to a friend: "I have set up a dinner-table for the sick poor, or rather, for such persons as are just out of the hospitals, and are hungry, and yet not strong enough to work. We have about twelve to dinner three times a week, and hope to continue the plan. It is such a comfort to see the good it does. I find it one of the great pleasures of writing, that it gives me more command of money for such purposes than falls to the lot of most women." Again, she writes to an American friend: "I should be much obliged to you if you would give in my name twenty-five dollars to some charity in Boston. I should prefer such a one as does not belong to any party in particular, such as a city infirmary or orphan school. I do not like to draw money from your country, and give none in charity."
Miss Ingelow is very fond of children, and herein is, perhaps, one secret of her success. In Off the Skelligs she says: "Some people appear to feel that they are much wiser, much nearer to the truth and to realities, than they were when they were children. They think of childhood as immeasurably beneath and behind them. I have never been able to join in such a notion. It often seems to me that we lose quite as much as we gain by our lengthened sojourn here. I should not at all wonder if the thoughts of our childhood, when we look back on it after the rending of this vail of our humanity, should prove less unlike what we were intended to derive from the teaching of life, nature, and revelation, than the thoughts of our more sophisticated days."
Best of all, this true woman and true poet as well, like Emerson, sees and believes in the progress of the race.
"Still humanity grows dearer,Being learned the more,"
"Still humanity grows dearer,Being learned the more,"
she says, in that tender poem,A Mother showing the Portrait of her Child. Blessed optimism! that amid all the shortcomings of human nature sees the best, lifts souls upward, and helps to make the world sunny by its singing.
* * * * *
Jean Ingelow died at her home in Kensington, London, July 19, 1897, at the age of sixty-seven, having been born in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1830. Her long illness ended in simple exhaustion, and she welcomed death gladly.