Part 40

To another friend she writes: "I suppose I may take for granted that mine was the poetic temperament, and since there are no thrilling incidents to relate, you may think you should like to have my views as to what that means. I cannot tell you in an hour, or even in a day, for it means so much. I suppose it, of its absence or presence, to make far more difference between one person and another than any contrast of circumstances can do. The possessor does not have it for nothing. It isolates, particularly in childhood; it takes away some common blessings, but then it consoles for them all."

With this poetic temperament, that saw beauty in flower, and sky, and bird, that felt keenly all the sorrow and all the happiness of the world about her, that wrote of life rather than art, because to live rightly was the whole problem of human existence, with this poetic temperament, the girl grew to womanhood in the city bordering on the sea.

Boston, at the mouth of the Witham, was once a famous seaport, the rival of London in commercial prosperity, in the thirteenth century. It was the site of the famous monastery of St. Botolph, built by a pious monk in 657. The town which grew up around it was called Botolph's town, contracted finally to Boston. From this town Reverend John Cotton came to America, and gave the name to the capital of Massachusetts, in which he settled. The present famous old church of St. Botolph was founded in 1309, having a bell-tower three hundred feet high, which supports a lantern visible at sea for forty miles.

The surrounding country is made up largely of marshes reclaimed from the sea, which are called fens, and slightly elevated tracts of land called moors. Here Jean Ingelow studied the green meadows and the ever-changing ocean.

Her first book, A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings, was published in 1850, when she was twenty, and a novel, Allerton and Dreux, in 1851; nine years later her Tales of Orris. But her fame came at thirty-three, when her first full book of Poems was published in 1863. This was dedicated to a much loved brother, George K. Ingelow:--

"YOUR LOVING SISTER OFFERS YOU THESE POEMS, PARTLY AS AN EXPRESSION OF HER AFFECTION, PARTLY FOR THE PLEASURE OF CONNECTING HER EFFORT WITH YOUR NAME."

The press everywhere gave flattering notices. A new singer had come; not one whose life had been spent in the study of Greek roots, simply, but one who had studied nature and humanity. She had a message to give the world, and she gave it well. It was a message of good cheer, of earnest purpose, of contentment and hope.

"What though unmarked the happy workman toil, And break unthanked of man the stubborn clod? It is enough, for sacred is the soil, Dear are the hills of God.

"Far better in its place the lowliest bird Should sing aright to him the lowliest song, Than that a seraph strayed should take the word And sing his glory wrong."

"But like a river, blest where'er it flows, Be still receiving while it still bestows." "That life Goes best with those who take it best. --it is well For us to be as happy as we can!"

"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."

The London press said: "Miss Ingelow's new volume exhibits abundant evidence that time, study, and devotion to her vocation have both elevated and welcomed the powers of the most gifted poetess we possess, now that Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Adelaide Proctor sing no more on earth. Lincolnshire has claims to be considered the Arcadia of England at present, having given birth to Mr. Tennyson and our present Lady Laureate."

The press of America was not less cordial. "Except Mrs. Browning, Jean Ingelow is first among the women whom the world calls poets," said the Independent.

The songs touched the popular heart, and some, set to music, were sung at numberless firesides. Who has not heard the Sailing beyond Seas?

"Methought the stars were blinking bright, And the old brig's sails unfurled; I said, 'I will sail to my love this night At 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 mast Did 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 Seam are lyrical treasures, and the author especially may be said to evince that sincerity which is poetry's most enduring warrant."

Winstanley is 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 day The sea broke down by night.

* * * * *

"A Scottish schooner made the port The 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 those That 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 Child was published in 1865, and A 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, with A Sister's Bye-hours, and since that time, Off the Skelligs in 1872, Fated to be Free in 1875, Sarah de Berenger in 1879, Don John in 1881, and Poems 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, the El Dorado of which Columbus and his followers dreamed in their stormy slumbers.... The first of her poems in this volume, Rosamund, is a masterly battle idyl."