A Story of Doom and other poems by Jean Ingelow (1867)

Ingelow's reputation had virtually died even before her death in 1897. She is a classic of mid nineteenth-century poetry. This was her penultimate volume of verse, before abandoning it until later life in favour of fiction. Variety is the key. Much of the longer material here, the love-meditation of Laurance, the deepened Biblical re-telling of A Story of Doom itself, the comic and fantastical Gladys and Her Island, are in blank verse and tend to the tangential, with quite esoteric wandering. Rhymed verse ties her down somehow and the sense is of a tighter vision and more rousing sentiments - Winstanley, right at the end, about the seventeenth century builder of the first Eddystone lighthouse, is the finest example. There is also striking rhymed work in Songs of the Night Watches. Interestingly, at one point here she combines her two modes. Songs with Preludes are fascinating examinations of five states; wedlock, regret, lamentation, dominion and friendship, with broader blank introductions and tapered, concentrated rhymed bodies. In all her moods, and their myriad subjects, she is a thoughtful and rich-hearted poet.