Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of Home: IV. YouthSeven Times Two
Jean Ingelow (18201897)Y
How many soever they be,
And let the brown meadow-lark’s note as he ranges
Come over, come over to me.
No magical sense conveys,
And bells have forgotten their old art of telling
The fortune of future days.
While a boy listened alone:
Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily
All by himself on a stone.
And mine, they are yet to be;
No listening, no longing, shall aught, aught discover:
You leave the story to me.
Preparing her hoods of snow;
She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather:
O, children take long to grow.
Nor long summer bide so late;
And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster,
For some things are ill to wait.
While dear hands are laid on my head;
“The child is a woman, the book may close over,
For all the lessons are said.”
Not one, as he sits on the tree;
The bells cannot ring it, but long years, O, bring it!
Such as I wish it to be.