Quotes from Jean Ingelow

How short our happy days appear! How long the sorrowful!

Children bring their own love with them when they come.

From henceforth thou shalt learn that there is love To long for, pureness to desire, a mount Of consecration it were good to scale.

How gently rock yon poplars high Against the reach of primrose sky With heaven's pale candles stored.

And bitter waxed the fray; Brother with brother spake no word When they met in the way.

The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.

O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile: So have all sages said, all poets sung.

Against her ankles as she trod The lucky buttercups did nod.

I am glad to think I am not bound to make the world go right, but only to discover and to do, with cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.

And old affront will stir the heart Through years of rankling pain.

Work is its own best earthly meed, Else have we none more than the sea-born throng Who wrought those marvellous isles that bloom afar.

For hearts where wakened love doth lurk, How fine, how blest a thing is work! For work does good when reasons fail.