Ebenezer Jones

Ebenezer Jones (20 January 1820 – 14 September 1860) was an English poet. He wrote a good deal of poetry of very unequal merit, but at his best shows a true poetic vein. He was befriended by Browning and Rossetti.

Quotes

• When the world is burning,
  Fired within, yet turning
    Round with face unscathed;
  Ere fierce flames, uprushing,
  O’er all lands leap, crushing,
    Till earth fall, fire-swathed;
  Up amidst the meadows,
  Gently through the shadows,
    Gentle flames will glide,
  Small, and blue, and golden.
  Though by bard beholden,
  When in calm dreams folden,—
    Calm his dreams will bide.
  • "When the World is Burning", st. 1

• I never wholly feel that summer is high,
  However green the trees, or loud the birds,
  However movelessly eye-winking herds
  Stand in field ponds, or under large trees lie,
  Till I do climb all cultured pastures by,
  That hedged by hedgerows studiously fretted trim,
  Smile like a lady’s face with lace laced prim,
  And on some moor or hill that seeks the sky
  Lonely and nakedly,—utterly lie down,
  And feel the sunshine throbbing on body and limb,
  My drowsy brain in pleasant drunkenness swim,
  Each rising thought sink back and dreamily drown,
  Smiles creep o’er my face, and smother my lips, and cloy,
  Each muscle sink to itself, and separately enjoy.
  • "High Summer" (1843)

About

• There can be no question of Jones's genius; his infirmities were those of most young poets, especially the self-taught; his latest productions show that his faults had gradually cured themselves, and that he needed nothing but fortitude to have taken a distinguished place among English poets. Personally he was as amiable as enthusiastic, deficient only in steadiness of purpose and virtues of the self-regarding order.
  • Richard Garnett, "Jones, Ebenezer", in Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 30 (1892), p. 97