Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897)

153. From ‘Scholar and Carpenter’

‘GRAND is the leisure of the earth;

She gives her happy myriads birth,

And after harvest fears not dearth,

But goes to sleep in snow-wreaths dim.

Dread is the leisure up above

The while He sits whose name is Love,

And waits, as Noah did, for the dove,

To wit if she would fly to him.

‘He waits for us, while, houseless things,

We beat about with bruisèd wings

On the dark floods and water-springs,

The ruined world, the desolate sea;

With open windows from the prime

All night, all day, He waits sublime,

Until the fullness of the time

Decreed from His eternity.

‘Where is OUR leisure?—Give us rest.

Where is the quiet we possessed?

We must have had it once—were blest

With peace whose phantoms yet entice.

Sorely the mother of mankind

Longed for the garden left behind;

For we still prove some yearnings blind

Inherited from Paradise.’

‘Hold, heart!’ I cried; ‘for trouble sleeps,

I hear no sound of aught that weeps;

I will not look into thy deeps—

I am afraid, I am afraid!’

‘Afraid!’ she saith; ‘and yet ’tis true

That what man dreads he still should view—

Should do the thing he fears to do,

And storm the ghosts in ambuscade!’

‘What good!’ I sigh. ‘Was reason meant

To straighten branches that are bent,

Or soothe an ancient discontent,

The instinct of a race dethroned?

Ah! doubly should that instinct go,

Must the four rivers cease to flow,

Nor yield those rumours sweet and low

Wherewith man’s life is undertoned.’

‘Yet had I but the past,’ she cries,

‘And it was lost, I would arise

And comfort me some other wise.

But more than loss about me clings.

I am but restless with my race;

The whispers from a heavenly place,

Once dropped among us, seem to chase

Rest with their prophet-visitings.

‘The race is like a child, as yet

Too young for all things to be set

Plainly before him, with no let

Or hindrance meet for his degree;

But ne’ertheless by much too old

Not to perceive that men withhold

More of the story than is told,

And so infer a mystery.

‘If the Celestials daily fly

With messages on missions high,

And float, our nests and turrets nigh,

Conversing on Heaven’s great intents,

What wonder hints of coming things,

Whereto men’s hope and yearning clings,

Should drop like feathers from their wings

And give us vague presentiments.

‘And as the waxing moon can take

The tidal waters in her wake,

And lead them round and round, to break

Obedient to her drawings dim;

So may the movements of His mind,

The first Great Father of mankind,

Affect with answering movements blind,

And draw the souls that breathe by Him.

‘We had a message long ago

That like a river peace should flow,

And Eden bloom again below.

We heard, and we began to wait:

Full soon that message men forgot;

Yet waiting is their destined lot,

And, waiting for they know not what,

They strive with yearnings passionate.’