Seven Times Two
You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes,
How many soever they be,
And let the brown meadow-lark’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, oh bring it!
Such as I wish it to be.
Jean Ingelow.