C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Jean Ingelow

And O the buttercups! that field

O’ the cloth of gold, where pennons swam—

Where France set up his lilied shield,

His oriflamb,

And Henry’s lion-standard rolled:

What was it to their matchless sheen,

Their million million drops of gold

Among the green!

Children, ay, forsooth

They bring their own love with them when they come,

But if they come not there is peace and rest;

The pretty lambs! and yet she cries for more;

Why, the world’s full of them, and so is heaven—

They are not rare.

For hearts where wakened love doth lurk,

How fine, how blest a thing is work!

For work does good when reasons fail.

Her face betokened all things dear and good,

The light of somewhat yet to come was there

Asleep, and waiting for the opening day,

When childish thoughts, like flowers, would drift away.

How short our happy days appear!

How long the sorrowful!

I opened the doors of my heart.

And behold,

There was music within and a song,

And echoes did feed on the sweetness, repeating it long.

I opened the doors of my heart. And behold,

There was music that played itself out in æolian notes:

Then was heard, as a far-away bell at long intervals tolled.

Man dwells apart, though not alone,

He walks among his peers unread;

The best of thoughts which he hath known,

For lack of listeners are not said.

Man is the miracle in nature. God

Is the One Miracle to man. Behold,

“There is a God,” thou sayest. Thou sayest well:

In that thou sayest all. To Be is more

Of wonderful, than being, to have wrought,

Or reigned, or rested.

O sleep! O sleep!

Do not forget me. Sometimes come and sweep,

Now I have nothing left, thy healing hand

Over the lids that crave thy visits bland,

Thou kind, thou comforting one.

For I have seen his face, as I desired,

And all my story is done.

O, I am tired.

O sleep, we are beholden to thee, sleep;

Thou bearest angels to us in the night,

Saints out of heaven with palms. Seen by thy light

Sorrow is some old tale that goeth not deep;

Love is a pouting child.

O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile:

So have all sages said, all poets sung.

Sorrows humanize our race;

Tears are the showers that fertilize this world.

The moon is bleached as white as wool,

And just dropping under;

Every star is gone but three,

And they hang far asunder,—

There’s a sea-ghost all in gray,

A tall shape of wonder!

The prayer of Noah,

He cried out in the darkness, Hear, O God,

Hear Him: hear this one; through the gates of death,

If life be all past praying for, O give

To Thy great multitude a way to peace;

Give them to Him.

The roses that in yonder hedge appear

Outdo our garden-buds which bloom within;

But since the hand may pluck them every day,

Unmarked they bud, bloom, drop, and drift away.

We are much bound to them that do succeed;

But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound

To such as fail. They all our loss expound;

They comfort us for work that will not speed,

And life—itself a failure.

We know they music made

In heaven, ere man’s creation;

But when God threw it down to us that strayed,

It dropt with lamentation,

And ever since doth its sweetness shade

With sighs for its first station.

What change has made the pastures sweet

And reached the daisies at my feet,

And cloud that wears a golden hem?

This lovely world, the hills, the sward—

They all look fresh, as if our Lord

But yesterday had finished them.

What is thy thought? There is no miracle?

There is a great one, which thou hast not read,

And never shalt escape. Thyself, O man,

Thou art the miracle. Ay, thou thyself,

Being in the world and of the world, thyself,

Hast breathed in breath from Him that made the world.

Thou art thy Father’s copy of Himself,—

Thou art thy Father’s miracle.

When I remember something which I had,

But which is gone, and I must do without,

I sometimes wonder how I can be glad,

Even in cowslip time when hedges sprout;

It makes me sigh to think on it,—but yet

My days will not be better days, should I forget.

When our thoughts are born,

Though they be good and humble, one should mind

How they are reared, or some will go astray

And shame their mother.

Work is its own best earthly meed,

Else have we none more than the sea-born throng

Who wrought those marvellous isles that bloom afar.

Youth! youth! how buoyant are thy hopes! they turn,

Like marigolds, toward the sunny side.

I am athirst for God, the living God.

People newly emerged from obscurity generally launch out into indiscriminate display.

There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover; there’s no rain left in heaven.

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