free-verse215 lines

Honors. - Part I.

by Jean Ingelow

(A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)

To strive - and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;

I set mine eyes upon a certain night

To find a certain star - and could not hail

With them its deep-set light.

Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:

I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift

Among the winged - I set these feet that halt

To run against the swift.

And yet this man, that loved me so, can write -

That loves me, I would say, can let me see;

Or fain would have me think he counts but light

These Honors lost to me.

(The letter of his friend.)

"What are they? that old house of yours which gave

Such welcome oft to me, the sunbeams fall

Yet, down the squares of blue and white which pave

Its hospitable hall.

"A brave old house! a garden full of bees,

Large dropping poppies, and Queen hollyhocks,

With butterflies for crowns - tree peonies

And pinks and goldilocks.

"Go, when the shadow of your house is long

Upon the garden - when some new-waked bird.

Pecking and fluttering, chirps a sudden song,

And not a leaf is stirred;

"But every one drops dew from either edge

Upon its fellow, while an amber ray

Slants up among the tree-tops like a wedge

Of liquid gold - to play

"Over and under them, and so to fall

Upon that lane of water lying below -

That piece of sky let in, that you do call

A pond, but which I know

"To be a deep and wondrous world; for I

Have seen the trees within it - marvellous things

So thick no bird betwixt their leaves could fly

But she would smite her wings; -

"Go there, I say; stand at the water's brink,

And shoals of spotted barbel you shall see

Basking between the shadows - look, and think

'This beauty is for me;

"'For me this freshness in the morning hours,

For me the water's clear tranquillity;

For me the soft descent of chestnut flowers;

The cushat's cry for me.

"'The lovely laughter of the wind-swayed wheat

The easy slope of yonder pastoral hill;

The sedgy brook whereby the red kine meet

And wade and drink their fill.'

"Then saunter down that terrace whence the sea

All fair with wing-like sails you may discern;

Be glad, and say 'This beauty is for me -

A thing to love and learn.

"'For me the bounding in of tides; for me

The laying bare of sands when they retreat;

The purple flush of calms, the sparkling glee

When waves and sunshine meet.'

"So, after gazing, homeward turn, and mount

To that long chamber in the roof; there tell

Your heart the laid-up lore it holds to count

And prize and ponder well.

"The lookings onward of the race before

It had a past to make it look behind;

Its reverent wonder, and its doubting sore,

Its adoration blind.

"The thunder of its war-songs, and the glow

Of chants to freedom by the old world sung;

The sweet love cadences that long ago

Dropped from the old-world tongue.

"And then this new-world lore that takes account

Of tangled star-dust; maps the triple whirl

Of blue and red and argent worlds that mount

And greet the IRISH EARL;

"Or float across the tube that HERSCHEL sways,

Like pale-rose chaplets, or like sapphire mist;

Or hang or droop along the heavenly ways,

Like scarves of amethyst.

"O strange it is and wide the new-world lore,

For next it treateth of our native dust!

Must dig out buried monsters, and explore

The green earth's fruitful crust;

"Must write the story of her seething youth -

How lizards paddled in her lukewarm seas;

Must show the cones she ripened, and forsooth

Count seasons on her trees;

"Must know her weight, and pry into her age,

Count her old beach lines by their tidal swell;

Her sunken mountains name, her craters gauge,

Her cold volcanoes tell;

"And treat her as a ball, that one might pass

From this hand to the other - such a ball

As he could measure with a blade of grass,

And say it was but small!

"Honors! O friend, I pray you bear with me:

The grass hath time to grow in meadow lands,

And leisurely the opal murmuring sea

Breaks on her yellow sands;

"And leisurely the ring-dove on her nest

Broods till her tender chick will peck the shell

And leisurely down fall from ferny crest

The dew-drops on the well;

"And leisurely your life and spirit grew,

With yet the time to grow and ripen free:

No judgment past withdraws that boon from you,

Nor granteth it to me.

"Still must I plod, and still in cities moil;

From precious leisure, learned leisure far,

Dull my best self with handling common soil;

Yet mine those honors are.

"Mine they are called; they are a name which means,

'This man had steady pulses, tranquil nerves:

Here, as in other fields, the most he gleans

Who works and never swerves.

"We measure not his mind; we cannot tell

What lieth under, over, or beside

The test we put him to; he doth excel,

We know, where he is tried;

"But, if he boast some farther excellence -

Mind to create as well as to attain;

To sway his peers by golden eloquence,

As wind doth shift a fane;

"'To sing among the poets - we are nought:

We cannot drop a line into that sea

And read its fathoms off, nor gauge a thought,

Nor map a simile.

"'It may be of all voices sublunar

The only one he echoes we did try;

We may have come upon the only star

That twinkles in his sky,'

"And so it was with me."

O false my friend!

False, false, a random charge, a blame undue;

Wrest not fair reasoning to a crooked end:

False, false, as you are true!

But I read on: "And so it was with me;

Your golden constellations lying apart

They neither hailed nor greeted heartily,

Nor noted on their chart.

"And yet to you and not to me belong

Those finer instincts that, like second sight

And hearing, catch creation's undersong,

And see by inner light.

"You are a well, whereon I, gazing, see

Reflections of the upper heavens - a well

From whence come deep, deep echoes up to me -

Some underwave's low swell.

"I cannot soar into the heights you show,

Nor dive among the deeps that you reveal;

But it is much that high things ARE to know,

That deep things ARE to feel.

"'Tis yours, not mine, to pluck out of your breast

Some human truth, whose workings recondite

Were unattired in words, and manifest

And hold it forth to light

"And cry, 'Behold this thing that I have found,'

And though they knew not of it till that day,

Nor should have done with no man to expound

Its meaning, yet they say,

"'We do accept it: lower than the shoals

We skim, this diver went, nor did create,

But find it for us deeper in our souls

Than we can penetrate.'

"You were to me the world's interpreter,

The man that taught me Nature's unknown tongue,

And to the notes of her wild dulcimer

First set sweet words, and sung.

"And what am I to you? A steady hand

To hold, a steadfast heart to trust withal;

Merely a man that loves you, and will stand

By you, whatever befall.

"But need we praise his tendance tutelar

Who feeds a flame that warms him? Yet 'tis true

I love you for the sake of what you are,

And not of what you do: -

"As heaven's high twins, whereof in Tyrian blue

The one revolveth: through his course immense

Might love his fellow of the damask hue,

For like, and difference.

"For different pathways evermore decreed

To intersect, but not to interfere;

For common goal, two aspects, and one speed,

One centre and one year;

"For deep affinities, for drawings strong,

That by their nature each must needs exert;

For loved alliance, and for union long,

That stands before desert.

"And yet desert makes brighter not the less,

For nearest his own star he shall not fail

To think those rays unmatched for nobleness,

That distance counts but pale.

"Be pale afar, since still to me you shine,

And must while Nature's eldest law shall hold;" -

Ah, there's the thought which makes his random line

Dear as refin'd gold!

Then shall I drink this draft of oxymel,

Part sweet, part sharp? Myself o'erprized to know

Is sharp; the cause is sweet, and truth to tell

Few would that cause forego,

Which is, that this of all the men on earth

Doth love me well enough to count me great -

To think my soul and his of equal girth -

O liberal estimate!

And yet it is so; he is bound to me,

For human love makes aliens near of kin;

By it I rise, there is equality:

I rise to thee, my twin.

"Take courage" - courage! ay, my purple peer

I will take courage; for thy Tyrian rays

Refresh me to the heart, and strangely dear

And healing is thy praise.

"Take courage," quoth he, "and respect the mind

Your Maker gave, for good your fate fulfil;

The fate round many hearts your own to wind."

Twin soul, I will! I will!