Like a red cabbage on December morn
Crusted with snow. His buxom daughter, Bess
A dahlia, not a rosebud-she who bears
The foaming porter to the guests, and laughs
The loudest at their wit. Can any Summer
Build you a nest like that?

FROM 'SQUIRE MAURICE.'

Inland I wander slow,

Mute with the power the earth and heaven wield:

A black spot sails across the golden field,

And through the air a crow.

Before me wavers spring's first butterfly;

From out the sunny noon there starts the cuckoo's cry;

The daisied meads are musical with lambs;

Some play, some feed, some, white as snow-flakes, lie
In the deep sunshine, by their silent dams.
The road grows wide and level to the feet;

The wandering woodbine through the hedge is drawn,
Unblown its streaky bugles dim and sweet;
Knee-deep in fern stand startled doe and fawn,
And lo! there gleams upon a spacious lawn
An Earl's marine retreat.

A little footpath quivers up the height,

And what a vision for a townsman's sight!

A village, peeping from its orchard bloom,
With lowly roofs of thatch, blue threads of smoke,
O'erlooking all, a parsonage of white.

I hear the smithy's hammer, stroke on stroke,
A steed is at the door; the rustics talk,
Proud of the notice of the gaitered groom;
A shallow river breaks o'er shallow falls.
Beside the ancient sluice that turns the mill
The lusty miller bawls;

The parson listens in his garden-walk,
The red-cloaked woman pauses on the hill.
This is a place, you say, exempt from ill,

A paradise, where, all the loitering day,
Enamoured pigeons coo upon the roof,
Where children ever play.

Alas! Time's webs are rotten, warp and woof;
Rotten his cloth of gold, his coarsest wear :

Here, black-eyed Richard ruins red-cheeked Moll,
Indifferent as a lord to her despair.

The broken barrow hates the prosperous dray;
And, for a padded pew in which to pray,
The grocer sells his soul.

JEAN INGELOW.

[BORN 1820 at Boston, Lincolnshire, of an English father and a Scottish mother. She spent her youth in the Fen country which she so often describes in her verses, and soon after 1860 fixed her home in London, where she died in 1897. In 1850 she published a volume of small importance; this was followed in 1863 by the Poems which made her reputation. This book ran through many editions, and four years later was issued in a volume illustrated by many of the best artists, which had so much success that twelve years later the 23rd edition was announced, while in America it is said that over 200,000 copies of her works were sold. After 1864 she wrote many novels and was particularly happy in her various stories for children.]

1

When Jean Ingelow published her first book, A Rhyming Chronicle, in 1849 or 1850, a relative of hers sent it to Tennyson and he acknowledged it saying: 'Your cousin must be worth knowing; there are some very charming things in her book. Then followed some rather sharp criticisms, and it may have been in part owing to them that the young lady hesitated for a dozen years before issuing another volume. That however, the Poems of 1863, had great and immediate success, for although it failed to satisfy readers in search of profound thought or exceptional technique, it appealed to that wide public which seeks for common themes intelligibly treated, tender feeling, and melodious verse. Nobody, not even the schoolgirls who adored her, ever claimed for Miss Ingelow a place among the great poets, but thousands of quiet folk enjoyed her ballads, her narratives, and her songs, because they expressed in a charming way the thoughts of which they themselves had been vaguely conscious and described in clear language situations and characters that they could understand and appreciate. The poems which we have selected, and which will be well known to the older generation of readers, will explain and justify this success, and those who read them, whether for the first time or as pieces with which they were once familiar, will admit that a poem so true and so tragic as The High Tide, or such a song as When Sparrows Build, are worth preserving and that their author ought not to be forgotten.

EDITOR.

THE HIGH TIDE ON THE COAST OF LINCOLNSHIRE.

The old mayor climbed the belfry tower,
The ringers ran by two, by three;
'Pull, if ye never pulled before;

Good ringers, pull your best,' quoth he.
'Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston Bells!
Ply all your changes, all your swells,
"The Brides of Enderby"!'

Play uppe

Men say it was a stolen tyde

The Lord that sent it, He knows all;
But in myne ears doth still abide

The message that the bells let fall:
And there was nought of strange, beside
The flights of mews and peewits pied

By millions crouched on the old sea wall.

I sat and spun within the doore,

My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;
The level sun, like ruddy ore,

Lay sinking in the barren skies,

And dark against day's golden death
She moved where Lindis wandereth,
My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth.

'Cusha! Cusha! Cusha! calling,
'For the dews will soone be falling;
Leave your meadow grasses mellow,

Mellow, mellow;

Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot,
Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,

Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,

From the clovers lift your head;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot,

Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,

Jetty, to the milking shed.'

VOL. V.

If it be long, ay, long ago,

When I beginne to think howe long,
Againe I hear the Lindis flow,

Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;
And all the aire, it seemeth mee,

Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee)
That ring the tune of Enderby.

Alle fresh the level pasture lay,

And not a shadow mote be seene,

Save where full five good miles away

The steeple tower'd from out the greene;
And lo! the great bell farre and wide
Was heard in all the country-side
That Saturday at eventide.

The swanherds where their scdges are
Moved on in sunset's golden breath,
The shepherde lads I heard afarre,
And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth;
Till floating o'er the grassy sea
Came down that kyndly message free,
The 'Brides of Mavis Enderby.'

Then some looked uppe into the sky,
And all along where Lindis flows

To where the goodly vessels lie,

And where the lordly steeple shows;
They sayde, 'And why should this thing be?
What danger lowers by land or sea?

They ring the tune of Enderby!

'For evil news from Mablethorpe,

Of pyrate galleys warping down;
For shippes ashore beyonde the scorpe,
They have not spared to wake the towne:

But while the west bin red to see,
And storms be none, and pyrates flee,
Why ring "The Brides of Enderby"?'

Q