Alice Meynell

“ Ranging all life to sing one only love,
Like a west wind across the world I move,
Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.
The countries change, but not the west-wind days
Which are my songs. My soft skies shine above,
And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.
I make the whole world answer to my art
And sweet monotonous meanings. In your ears
I change not ever, bearing, for my part,
One thought that is the treasure of my years,
A small cloud full of rain upon my heart
And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears. ”

“ All the earth’s wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.
Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.
Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.
Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
Thy humanity. ”

“ Though wild words part my soul from thee.
Thou art like silence unperplexed,
A secret and a mystery
Between one footfall and the next.
Most dear pause in a mellow lay!
Thou art inwoven with every air.
With thee the wildest tempests play,
And snatches of thee everywhere
Make little heavens throughout a day.
Darkness and solitude shine, for me.
For life’s fair outward part are rife
The silver noises; let them be.
It is the very soul of life
Listens for thee, listens for thee.
O pause between the sobs of cares!
O thought within all thought that is ”

“ And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it.
Oh, in some hour of thine my thoughts shall guide thee.
Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence hide thee,
This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee,—
Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden,
With thy regrets was morning over-shaden,
With sorrow thou hast left, her life was laden.
But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee
Life changes, and the years and days renew thee.
Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee. ”

“ I wait some future, all a lyre for thee.
SONNET
Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.
If ever, in time to come, you would explore it—
Your old self whose thoughts went like last year’s pansies,
Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.
To keep all joys of yours from Time’s estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
Happy, and pensive past for ever is. ”

“ SONNET—SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS
O’er the Campagna it is dim warm weather;
The Spring comes with a full heart silently,
And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.
With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together
Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.
Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.
I fain would put my hands about thy face,
Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,
And draw thee to me like a mournful child. ”

“ Will become a long dumb world up in the colder sadder air,
And the little mournful lonelinesses in the little hills
Wider wilderness fulfils.
And if e’er you should come down to the village or the town,
With the cold rain for your garland, and the wind for your renown,
You will stand upon the thresholds with a face or dumb desire,
Nor be known by any fire.
It is memory that shrinks. You were all too brave, methinks,
Climbing solitudes of flowering cistus and the thin wild pinks,
Musing, setting to a haunting air in one vague reverie
All the life that was to be. ”

“ In these young days you meditate your part;
⁠I have it all by heart.
I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
⁠Hidden and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
⁠Alter his interval.
But not a flower or song I ponder is
⁠My own, but memory's.
I shall be silent in those days desired
⁠Before a world inspired.
O all brown birds, compose your old song-phrases,
⁠Earth, thy familiar daisies! ”

“ The food and raiment of the Child.
TO THE BELOVED DEAD—A LAMENT
Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i’ the wind and rain.
Even as to him who plays that idle air,
It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee. ”

“ The sky of wind and rain and fire,
And in man’s world of long desire—
In all that is yet dumb in these—
Have found a more mysterious lyre.
THE POET SINGS TO HER POET
THE MOON TO THE SUN
As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
Shine, Earth loves thee! And then shine
And be loved through thoughts of mine. ”

“ Not yet to breathing man, not to his song,
Not to his comforted heart; not to the long
Close-cultivated lands beneath the hill.
⁠Summer was gently with them still.
But on the Apennine mustered the cloud;
The grappling storm shut down. Aloft, aloud,
Ruled secret tempest one long day and night,
⁠Until another morning's light.
O tender mountain-tops and delicate,
Where summer-long the westering sunlight sate! ”

“ For others of thy fragrance, secret child?
Who knows if last things or if first things claim thee?
—Whether thou be the last smile of my sorrow,
Or else a joy too sweet, a joy too wild?
How, my December violet, shall I name thee?
FUTURE POETRY
No new delights to our desire
The singers of the past can yield.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
Poets unborn and unrevealed.
Singers to come, what thoughts will start
To song? what words of yours be sent
Through man’s soul, and with earth be blent? ”

“ We never meet; yet we meet day by day
Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
The good we love, and sleep—our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they,
Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.
Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
Or thou of me, these always love and live. ”

“ These my barren hills are flushing faintly, strangely, in the May,
With the presence of the Spring amongst the smallest flowers that grow.’
But the summer in the snow?
Do you know, who are so bold, how in sooth the rule will hold,
Settled by a wayward child’s ideal at some ten years old?
—How the human arms you slip from, thoughts and love you stay not for,
Will not open to you more? ”

“ Will not fear or shun thee more.
Thou shalt intimately lie
In the roots of flowers that thrust
Upwards from thee to the sky,
With no more distrust,
When they blossom from thy dust.
Silent labours of the rain
Shall be near thee, reconciled;
Little lives of leaves and grain,
All things shy and wild
Tell thee secrets, quiet child.
Earth, set free from thy fair fancies
And the art thou shalt resign,
Will bring forth her rue and pansies
Unto more divine
Thoughts than any thoughts of thine.
Nought will fear thee, humbled creature. ”

“ To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,
⁠And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,
⁠⁠And to the future of my own young art,
And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,
⁠My friend, to your calm face and the immortal
⁠⁠Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart. ”

“ Whose staff folded my thoughts before my birth,
Control them now I am of earth, and now
⁠⁠Thou art no more of earth.
⁠⁠"O liberal, constant, dear!
Crush in my nature the ungenerous art
Of the inferior; set me high, and here,
⁠⁠Here garner up thy heart."
⁠⁠Like to him now are they,
The million living fathers of the War—
Mourning the crippled world, the bitter day—
⁠⁠Whose striplings are no more.
⁠⁠The crippled world! Come then,
Fathers of women with your honour in trust ”

“ Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
⁠My past poetic pain in rain be weeping?
⁠No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.
From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
⁠And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
⁠⁠Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe. ”

“ But who shall stop the patient rain?
⁠His tears must not disturb my heart,
⁠But who shall change the years, and part
The world from every thought of pain?
Although my life is left so dim,
The morning crowns the mountain-rim ”

“ My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press
⁠And reach in further than you know,
⁠And fills all these; and, when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness. ”

“ My silence, life returns to thee
In all the pauses of her breath.
Hush back to rest the melody
That out of thee awakeneth;
And thou, wake ever, wake for me.
Full, full is life in hidden places,
For thou art silence unto me.
Full, full is thought in endless spaces.
Full is my life. A silent sea
Lies round all shores with long embraces. ”

“ LORD, where are Thy prerogatives?
⁠Why, men have more than Thou hast kept;
The king rewards, remits, forgives,
⁠The poet to a throne has stept.
And Thou, despoiled, hast given away
⁠Worship to men, success to strife,
Thy glory to the heavenly day,
⁠And made Thy sun the lord of life. ”

“ Its grace and beauty are the flower, not only of her life, but of her contemplation of life. Her very daydreams are lit with the light of day. Her feelings spring from her mind, her thoughts from her heart. There is room in them for a wit that is the weapon of the rarest tenderness. Mrs. Meynell's books have taken their chosen, quiet, unfaltering way—too lofty a way for ease or weariness or absent-mindedness to follow. She is sure.—Times.
Mrs. Meynell found herself long ago, and was found by all English-speaking lovers of poetry.—Manchester Guardian. ”

“ Yet, as so many poets love to sing
⁠ (When young the child will die) ,
"No autumn will destroy this lovely spring,"
⁠So, Sylvia, I.
I'll write thee dapper verse and touching rhyme;
⁠"Our eyes shall not behold—"
The commonplace shall serve for thee this time:
⁠"Never grow old." ”

“ WHO looked for thee, thou little song of mine?
⁠This winter of a silent poet's heart
⁠Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art,
Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.
Art thou a last one, orphan of thy line? ”

“ The radiant love has never passed away.
⁠And one was Wordsworth; he
Conceived the love of Nature childishly
As no adult heart might; old poets sing
That exaltation by remembering.
⁠For no divine
Intelligence, or art, or fire, or wine,
Is high-delirious as that rising lark—
The child's soul and its daybreak in the dark. ”

“ How shall I thrust thee apart
⁠Since all my growth tends to thee night and day—
To thee faith, hope, and art?
⁠Swift are the currents setting all one way;
They draw my life, my life, out of my heart. ”

“ UNLIKE the youth that all men say
⁠They prize—youth of abounding blood,
In love with the sufficient day,
⁠And gay in growth, and strong in bud;
Unlike was mine! Then my first slumber
⁠Nightly rehearsed my last; each breath
Knew itself one of the unknown number.
⁠But Life was urgent with me as Death. ”

“ I COME from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
⁠Down, through long links of death and birth,
⁠From the past poets of the earth.
My immortality is there.
I am like the blossom of an hour. ”

“ To make a glory of thy silent pining,
A triumph of thy mute and strange declining.
Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded.
Only one morning, and the day was clouded.
And one old age with all regrets is crowded. ”

“ TO TINTORETTO IN VENICE
The Art of Painting had in the Primitive years looked with the light, not towards it. Before Tintoretto's date, however, many painters practised shadows and lights, and turned more or less sunwards; but he set the figure between himself and a full sun. His work is to be known in Venice by the splendid trick of an occluded sun and a shadow thrown straight at the spectator. ”

“ WEST WIND IN WINTER
ANOTHER day awakes. And who—
⁠Changing the world—is this?
He comes at whiles, the winter through
⁠West Wind! I would not miss
His sudden tryst: the long, the new
⁠Surprises of his kiss. ”

“ From my constraining love, alas for me!
⁠His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
⁠As one with vigorous music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. ”

“ And tones of summer in the sea.
And I have set thy paths, I guide
Thy blossoms on the wild hillside.
⁠And I, thy bygone poet, share
⁠The flowers that throng thy feet where'er
I led thy feet before I died. ”

“ Sir (to an angel) , what is yonder
⁠More bright than the remembered skies,
A lovelier light, a softer splendour
⁠Than when the moon was wont to rise?
Surely no sinner wears such seeming
⁠Even the Rescued World within? ”

“ Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath,
⁠Fear, like the fear of eld
That knows the price of life, the name of death.
⁠What is it justifies
This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,
⁠The terror in those eyes
When only eyes can speak—they are so young? ”

“ Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
⁠Give one repose to pain I know not now,
⁠One check to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey. ”