Jean Ingelow

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At twenty-one the girl's heart flutters with expectancy:--

"I leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover,
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover;
Hush nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale wait
Till I listen and hear
If a step draweth near,
For my love he is late!"

At twenty-eight, the happy mother lives in a simple home, made beautiful by her children:--

"Heigho! daisies and buttercups!
Mother shall thread them a daisy chain."

At thirty-five a widow; at forty-two giving up her children to brighten other homes; at forty-nine, "Longing for Home."

"I had a nestful once of my own,
Ah, happy, happy I!
Right dearly I loved them, but when they were grown
They spread out their wings to fly.
O, one after another they flew away,
Far up to the heavenly blue,
To the better country, the upper day,
And--I wish I was going too."

The Songs of Seven will be read and treasured as long as there are women in the world to be loved, and men in the world to love them.

My especial favorite in the volume was the poem Divided. Never have I seen more exquisite kinship with nature, or more delicate and tender feeling. Where is there so beautiful a picture as this?

"An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of fox-glove, yellow of broom;
We two among them, wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

"Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

* * * * *

"We two walk till the purple dieth,
And short, dry grass under foot is brown;
But one little streak at a distance lieth
Green like a ribbon to prank the down.

"Over the grass we stepped into it,
And God He knoweth how blithe we were!
Never a voice to bid us eschew it;
Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!

* * * * *