You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes,
How many soever they be,
And let the brown meadowlark's note, as he ranges,
Come over, come over to me!
Yet birds' clearest carol, by fall or by swelling,
No magical sense conveys;
And bells have forgotten their old art of telling
The fortune of future days.
"Turn again, turn again!" once they rang cheerily,
While a boy listened alone;
Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily
All by himself on a stone.
Poor bells! I forgive you; your good days are over,
And mine, they are yet to be;
No listening, no longing, shall aught, aught discover:
You leave the story to me.
The foxglove shoots out of the green matted heather,
And hangeth her hoods of snow;
She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather:
Oh, children take long to grow!
I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster,
Nor long summer bide so late;
And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster,
For some things are ill to wait.
I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover,
While dear hands are laid on my head,
"The child is a woman--the book may close over,
For all the lessons are said."
I wait for my story: the birds cannot sing it,
Not one, as he sits on the tree;
The bells cannot ring it, but long years, O bring it!
Such as I wish it to be.
_Jean Ingelow._
* * * * *
"TURN AGAIN, TURN AGAIN!" Reference is here made to Dick
Whittington, a poor orphan country lad, who went to London to earn a
living, and who afterwards rose to be the first Lord Mayor of that city.
NOTE.--This poem is the second of a series of seven lyrics, entitled
"The Songs of Seven," which picture seven stages in a woman's life. For
the first of the series, "Seven Times One," see page 44 of the Fourth
Reader. Read it in connection with this. "Seven Times Two" shows the
girl standing at the entrance to maidenhood, books closed and lessons
said, longing for the years to go faster to bring to her the happiness
she imagines is waiting.
[Illustration:]
* * * * *
_52_
man' i fold
do mes' tic
pet' tish ly
in grat' i tude