Alice Meynell

“ These things will be, but oh, across the hills,
Behind me in the dark, what things will be?
—Well, even if sorrow fills me through and through
Until my life be pain and pain my life,
Shall I not bear myself and my own life?
—A little life, O Lord, a little sorrow.
And I remember once when I was ill
That the whole world seemed breaking through with me,
Who lay so light and still; stillness availed not,
My weakness being a thing of power, I thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;
⁠A care half lost in cares;
The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;
⁠Thy name among my prayers.
I would the day might come, so waited for,
⁠So patiently besought,
When I, returning, should fill up once more
⁠Thy desolated thought;
And fill thy loneliness that lies apart
⁠In still, persistent pain.
Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,
⁠As the tide comes again,
And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets
⁠Seaweeds afloat, and fills
The silent pools, rivers and rivulets
⁠Among the inland hills? ”

“ 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 full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. ”

“ Ours the sorrow, outpouring
Sad self on a selfless thing,
As our eyes and hearts are mild
With our sympathy for Spring,
With a pity sweet and wild
For the innocent and far,
With our sadness in a star,
Or our sadness in a child. ”

“ With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.
But thou, who soundest in my tune and rhyme,
Hast tones I wake not, in thy land and sea,
Loveliness not for me, secrets from me,
Thoughts for another, and another time. ”

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

“ It is sad with mysteries
Of a small immortal thing
That the passing ages sing,—
Simple music making mirth
Of the dying and the birth
Of the people of the earth.
No, not sad; we are beguiled,
Sad with living as we are ”

“ 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. ”

“ My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But O my 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. ”

“ Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
Give one repose to pain I know not now,
One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
Oh, rash! (I smile) as one, when Spring is grey,
Who dedicates a land of hidden wheat. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Joy is not gone from summer skies,
Nor innocence from children's eyes,
And all these things are part of him.
He is not banished, for the showers
Yet wake this green warm earth of ours.
How can the summer but be sweet? ”

“ Oh, for the secrets of a whispering wild of flowers,
⁠And guess'd accords of the harper-wind i' the trees,
⁠And the warm summer-bees.
⁠For us the springs are old,
⁠And summer after summer cold.
⁠For us the eagles scream
⁠Once suddenly in the sleep of snow.
⁠A deed is done among the centuries.
⁠An avalanche slides slow,
⁠And rests: one more eternity it lies:
⁠And there has been a fall across the dream
⁠Of the white sleep of snow.
⁠Our cold and crownéd heads are lifted up in woe,
⁠Our barren faces,
⁠Whose tears are sealed in awful places. ”

“ I laid upon the pure and simple Nature
(Now all the hills and fields are free of me) ,
Smiling at my elaborate sigh the smile
Of any Greek composing sunny gods.
And now begins my one true white child-time,
This time of desolate altars and all ruins.
For Pan is dead and the altars are in ruins.
"The world is full of endings for me, I find,
Emotions lost, and words and thoughts forgotten. ”

“ From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him for ever;
The music that he listens to betrays
His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know not, and I wait for Heaven.
He did not plead for child of mine,
But for another Child divine,
And unto Him it was surely given.
There is one alone who cannot change;
Dreams are we, shadows, visions strange ”

“ We two are sundered always, sweet.
A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn
And the cold sea-shore when we meet.
The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet.
We are not day and night, my Fair,
But one. It is an hour of hours. ”

“ Thou who singest through the earth,
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. ”

“ And the wild, wild call my soul begot,
The long wild call, I know not what,—
We met not then, for it reached you not,
And never again. But our hearts did greet.
Whatever path misled your feet,
Voices so true could not but meet. ”

“ Except the few that sing to me.
Hide then within my heart, oh, hide
All thou art loth should go from thee.
Be kinder to thyself and me.
My cupfull from this river's tide
Shall never reach the long sad sea. ”

“ Thy soft skies shine above,
And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.
So make the whole world answer to thy art,
And sweet monotonous meanings; charm our ears ”

“ PYGMALION.
THE POET TO HIS POETRY.
There is no body without its spirit or genius.—Emerson.
Thou art to live; I am watching thee.
I have laid my patient chisel away,
And watch thee somewhat wearily. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Or wert thou rapt awhile to other spheres
⁠To gladden tenderer ears?
Doth music's soul contain thee, precious air,
⁠Sleepest thou clasped there,
Until a time shall come for thee to start
⁠Into some unborn heart? ”

“ The leaves are many under my feet,
⁠And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
⁠A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.
The low winds moan for dead sweet years ”

“ Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world. ”

“ And go my journey as I live,—alone.
Then in the ripe rays of the later day
All the small blades of thin grass one by one,
Looked through with sun, will make each a long shade,
And daisies' heads will bend with butterflies. ”

“ Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown. ”

“ Undoing our work; we are children chidden
With pity, and smiles of many a year.
Who shall allot the praise, and guess
What part is yours and what is ours?—
O years that certainly will bless
Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers,
With ruin all our perfectness. ”

“ 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 of dumb desire,
⁠Nor be known by any fire.
It is memory that shrinks. ”

“ Can these atone,
⁠Shall these repay?
⁠No, nor the dawns we know,
Whose thoughts grow light on our eternal snow.
⁠We mourn, we pray:
⁠Oh, melt our snows to rain.
⁠How can we reach thee?
⁠Lay us low. ”

“ L'océan connu, l'âme reste à sonder.⁠
Victor Hugo.
O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise
⁠In the young children's eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
⁠Leaf-folded violet. ”

“ AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL.
Benedetto sia'l giorno e'l mese e l'anno.⁠
Petrarca.
There's a feast, undated, yet
Both our true lives hold it fast,—
The first day we ever met.
What a great day came and passed! ”

“ 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 ”