een 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!

* * * * *

"A shady freshness, chafers whirring,
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring,
A cloud to the eastward, snowy as curds.

"Bare, glassy slopes, where kids are tethered;
Round valleys like nests all ferny lined;
Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered,
Swell high in their freckled robes behind.

* * * * *

"Glitters the dew and shines the river,
Up comes the lily and dries her bell;
But two are walking apart forever,
And wave their hands for a mute farewell.

* * * * *

"And yet I know past all doubting, truly--
And knowledge greater than grief can dim--
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly--
Yea, better--e'en better than I love him.

"And as I walk by the vast calm river,
The awful river so dread to see,
I say, 'Thy breadth and thy depth forever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.'"

In what choice but simple language we are thus told that two loving
hearts cannot be divided.

Years went by, and I was at last to see the author of the poems I had
loved in girlhood. I had wondered how she looked, what was her manner,
and what were her surroundings.

In Kensington, a suburb of London, in a two-story-and-a-half stone
house, cream-colored, lives Jean Ingelow. Tasteful grounds are in
front of the home, and in the rear a large lawn bordered with many
flowers, and conservatories; a real English garden, soft as velvet,
and fragrant as ne