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    Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell (Illustrated)
    Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell (Illustrated)
    Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell (Illustrated)
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    Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell (Illustrated)

    By Alice Meynell

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    About this ebook

    The English poet and essayist Alice Meynell was twice considered for the Poet Laureate, upon the deaths of both Tennyson and Alfred Austin. She was one of the early founders of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, in support of peaceful means for the achievement of equal suffrage rights for women. Meynell’s poetry is marked by its simple vocabulary and religious sincerity, communicating a gentle mournfulness and a sense of the passing of time. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature’s finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Meynell’s complete poetical works, with related illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)


    * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Meynell’s life and works
    * Concise introduction to Meynell’s life and poetry
    * Rare posthumous poems available in no other collection
    * Images of how the poetry books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
    * Excellent formatting of the poems
    * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the poetry
    * Easily locate the poems you want to read
    * Includes Meynell’s essays — spend hours exploring the poet’s prose
    * Ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres


    Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to see our wide range of poet titles


    CONTENTS:


    The Life and Poetry of Alice Meynell
    Brief Introduction: Alice Meynell by Katherine Brégy
    Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell
    List of Poems in Alphabetical Order


    The Prose
    The Poor Sisters of Nazareth (1889)
    The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays (1893)
    The Colour of Life and Other Essays on Things Seen or Heard (1896)
    The Children (1897)
    The Spirit of Place and Other Essays (1899)
    London Impressions (1898)
    Ceres’ Runaway and Other Essays (1909)
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1911)
    Essays (1914)
    Hearts of Controversy (1917)


    Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of poetry titles or buy the entire Delphi Poets Series as a Super Set


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDelphi Publishing Ltd
    Release dateOct 7, 2021
    ISBN9781801700320
    Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell (Illustrated)

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      Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell (Illustrated) - Alice Meynell

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      Alice Meynell

      (1847-1922)

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      Contents

      The Life and Poetry of Alice Meynell

      Brief Introduction: Alice Meynell by Katherine Brégy

      Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell

      List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

      The Prose

      The Poor Sisters of Nazareth (1889)

      The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays (1893)

      The Colour of Life and Other Essays on Things Seen or Heard (1896)

      The Children (1897)

      The Spirit of Place and Other Essays (1899)

      London Impressions (1898)

      Ceres’ Runaway and Other Essays (1909)

      Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1911)

      Essays (1914)

      Hearts of Controversy (1917)

      The Delphi Classics Catalogue

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      © Delphi Classics 2021

      Version 1

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      Browse the entire series…

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      Alice Meynell

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      By Delphi Classics, 2021

      COPYRIGHT

      Alice Meynell - Delphi Poets Series

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      First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2021.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 80170 032 0

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

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      www.delphiclassics.com

      NOTE

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      When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

      The Life and Poetry of Alice Meynell

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      Barnes, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames — Alice Meynell’s birthplace

      Brief Introduction: Alice Meynell by Katherine Brégy

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      From ‘The Poets’ Chantry’ (1912)

      THE WORLD WAS FIRST AWARE of Alice Meynell (or as she then was, Alice Thompson) as a poet when the little initial volume, Preludes, blossomed into life like a March violet — early enough, one can never forget, to win Ruskin’s enthusiastic praise. Three of its selections (San Lorenzo’s Mother, together with the closing lines of the Daisy sonnet and that unforgettable Letter from a Girl to Her Own Old Age) he forthright declared the finest things I have yet seen, or felt, in modern verse. That was a personal estimate, to be sure, since Tennyson, Browning, Patmore, and Swinburne were all in the act of writing memorable things; but what a thunderously significant tribute to lay at the feet of a young girl just lifting up her voice in song! Abyssus abyssum invocat.

      More than a quarter of a century has passed, and in the actual matter of poetry, Mrs. Meynell has published but two additional volumes, the Poems of 1893 (an augmented reprint of the original booklet) and the slight but weighty Later Poems of 1901; these, with fugitive strains of rare beauty in some favoured review, make up the sum. The voice in its moment was ex cathedra; having spoken, she may hold her peace.

      She has elected all along to speak in a deliberately vestal and cloistral poetry. Remote as the mountain snows, yet near as the wind upon our face, is her song. It is seldom sensuous, the very imagery being evoked, in the main, from the intellectual vision; and there are moments when amorous thought has sucked pale Fancy’s breath quite out of the stanzas. Yet these tremble with a deep and impassioned emotion — emotion which seems aloof because it is so interior. For the characteristic note of Mrs. Meynell’s music is not yearning or aspiration; it is not the dear and consummate fruition of life; still less is it a mourning over things lost. It is the note of active renunciation. Renunciation of the beloved by the lover, that both may be more true to the Heart of Love; renunciation by the poet, the artist, not only of the poor, precious human comforting, but likewise of his own sweet prodigality in art — that he may see a few things clearly, without excess; in fine, the ultimate and inevitable renunciations of the elect soul.

      Renunciation of the beloved by the lover; that, surely is not a new note; quite a universal note, life and art would seem to say. It is instinct with the power and passion which are the raison d’être of poetry. Yet it is never a seriously chosen and admitted strain save by the very little flock — and Mrs. Meynell has made it quite her own. One exquisite sonnet, Renouncement, has concentrated the message; but the companion poem may be discerned to beat with a still more poignant music. After a Parting it is named: —

      Farewell has long been said; I have foregone thee;

      ⁠I never name thee even.

      But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?

      ⁠For thou art so near Heaven

      That heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

      Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;

      ⁠My trembling thoughts discern

      Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;

      ⁠And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn

      Unto a smile of thine.

      img21.jpg

      Alice Meynell — From a photograph by Resta

      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.

      Another early poem, To the Beloved, should be quoted in contrast. Surpassingly tender and delicate is its feeling; but its reticence, its singular peace, are almost a rebuke to more vehement possessors:

      Oh, not more subtly silence strays

      ⁠Amongst the winds, between the voices,

      Mingling alike with pensive lays,

      ⁠And with the music that rejoices,

      Than thou art present in my days.

      ·⁠·⁠·⁠·⁠·⁠·

      Thou art like silence all unvexed

      ⁠Though wild words part my soul from thee.

      Thou art like silence unperplexed,

      ⁠A secret and a mystery

      Between one footfall and the next.

      ·⁠·⁠·⁠·⁠·⁠·

      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.

      Even for this denial, this abeyance of love, has Alice Meynell reserved her own quintessential vehemence.

      All this perennial, repetitional sacrifice of the lower to the higher good was foreshadowed in her earliest verses. It is a solitariness never far from our poet’s song — a wistful loneliness in the youthful stanzas; a pain high-heartedly born, welcomed, treasured above all cheaper gifts in the more mature pages. Much has been said about that unique and heart-shaking Letter from a Girl to her Own Old Age. But there is a less known apostrophe, The Poet to his Childhood, about which something remains to be spoken. It probes to the heart of the sacrificial vocation — whether poetic or sacerdotal matters little:

      If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain,

      With a singing soul for music’s sake I climb and meet the rain,

      And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be

      ⁠Unconsoled by sympathy.

      Mrs. Meynell has loved the Lady Poverty as truly as ever the Assisian did: but hers is a Lady whose realm is over letters as well as life. She dwells in the twilight and the dawn; her cool, quiet fingers are pressed upon the temples of love; in slender landscape and austere, in nature marvellously but not rapturously understood, she is found. And close beside her treads another Lady, our sister, the Death of the Body — Death the Revealer, making clear at last the mysteries of weary Life. This is distinctly the motive, very personal and very perfect, not merely of the much-praised sonnet To a Daisy, but of Mrs. Meynell’s Nature poetry as a whole.

      Through The Neophyte and San Lorenzo Giustiniani’s Mother the selfsame cry is variously but unmistakably heard. It stings the soul in that late and mystical lyric:

      ⁠Why wilt thou chide,

      Who hast attained to be denied?

      ⁠Oh learn, above

      All price is my refusal, Love.

      ⁠My sacred Nay

      Was never cheapened by the way;

      ⁠Thy single sorrow crowns thee lord

      Of an unpurchasable word.

      ⁠Oh strong! Oh pure!

      As Yea makes happier loves secure,

      ⁠I vow thee this

      Unique rejection of a kiss!

      ·⁠·⁠·⁠·⁠·⁠·

      More than one meditation of this final volume suggest the influence of that immemorial (and in these latter days too little known) treasure-house of poetry and vision, the Roman Breviary. But always the distinction and the originality of Alice Meynell’s thought, the peculiar personality of her vision, have about them a very sacredness. Not lightly comes the illumination of the singular soul: that particular judgment so transcendently more appalling than the final and general judgment! She has not feared to travel up the mountain side alone — to look down, with eyes that have known both tears and the drying of tears, upon the ways of human life.

      In the matter of artistry and poetic technique, Mrs. Meynell’s work is like fine gold smithery; classic gold smithery, exquisite and austere. I could wish abstention to exist, and even to he evident in my words, she has somewhere written; but the words are scrupulously chosen. Her mastery over slight forms — the quatrain, the couplet — is quite as consummate and almost as felicitous as Father Tabb’s. And through this ethereal poetry shine lines of the highest and most serious power.

      They who doomed by infallible decrees

      Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave,

      falls upon the ear with Miltonic grandeur. And any poet might rejoice in the fancy which perceives day’s memories flocking home at dusk to the dove-cote doors of sleep, or cries out so subtly in the colourless February dawning:

      A poet’s face asleep is this grey morn!

      Mrs. Meynell’s poetry, like a certain school of modern music, suggests and betrays rather than expresses emotion. It is definite but intangible. It creates an atmosphere of angelically clear thought, of rare delicacies of feeling, and speaks with a perfect reticence. Mistakenly, perhaps, the hasty might dub it a poetry of promise: on the contrary, it is a poetry of uncommonly fine achievement. But it does not achieve the expected thing. We are conscious of a light, a flash, a voice, a perfume — the soul of the Muse has passed by. And we were looking for the body, flower-crowned!

      When all is said, it is in her prose that Mrs. Meynell has attained the most compelling and indubitable distinction. In much critical work and some biography, and in a series of essays covering subjects all the way from impressionist art to the ways of childhood — or from Pocket Vocabularies to the Hours of Sleep — her pen has prevailed with a masterful delicacy. These brief pages are seldom distinctly literary in theme, yet they have made literature. Scarcely ever are they professedly religious, yet the whole science of the saints rests by implication within their pages. Alice Meynell is the true contemplative of letters. For contemplation, which in the spiritual world has been described as a looking at and listening to God, is in the world of art a looking at and listening to life. It is an exceedingly quiet and sensitive attention to all that others see but transiently, superficially, in the large. We can scarcely believe many minds capable of the exquisitely subtle and sustained attention, the delicate weighing, the differentiation, and withal the liberal sympathy, which have been the very keynote of her criticism. Take, as an instance, this pregnant passage upon the return and periodicity of our mental processes:

      Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods toward death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards recovery. . . Even the burden of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a temporary peace; and remorse itself does not remain — it returns. Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. . . . Love itself has tidal times — lapses and ebbs which are due to the metrical rule of the interior heart, but which the lover vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward alteration in the beloved.

      Coventry Patmore (who in his turn has been the subject of Mrs. Meynell’s illuminative criticism) declared fully one half of the volume just quoted, The Rhythm of Life, to be classical work, embodying as it does new thought in perfect language, and bearing in every sentence the hallmark of genius. Only the poets, perhaps, have shared with the saints this singular contemplative attention to things great and small. And in the Nature painting which colours Mrs. Meynell’s pages the same quality is conspicuous. Neither the lyre nor the brush seems strange to the hand which has so sketched for us the majesty of the cloud — not guardian of the sun’s rays merely, but the sun’s treasurer; the course of the south-west wind, regnant and imperious; and that heroic sky, beneath whose light few of the things that were ever done upon earth are great enough to have dared the doing. Not Wordsworth himself has more graciously sung of the daffodil. And who has so understandingly praised the modest yet prevailing grass of the fields, or the trees of July, or given so discerning a study to the gentle Colour of Life?

      Up and down upon the earth, to and fro upon it, wander the children of men; but few indeed may be trusted to catch the authentic Spirit of Place. Scarcely even our beloved Robert Louis, it would seem, since we have his own record that the act of voyaging was an end in itself — there being

      ⁠nothing under Heaven so blue

      That’s fairly worth the travelling to!

      But to the eyes of this woman there is not the same blue in more than a single zenith. Spirit of place! she cries in one most characteristic passage, It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. . . . The untravelled spirit of place — not to be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without variation — lurks in the byways and rules over the tower, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. . . . Was ever journey too hard or too long, that had to pay such a visit? And if by good fortune it is a child who is the pilgrim, the spirit of place gives him a peculiar welcome. . . . He is well used to words and voices that he does not understand, and this is a condition of his simplicity; and when those unknown words are bells, loud in the night, they are to him as homely and as old as lullabies.

      It is almost a pity, for letters, that so few poets have been mothers; it is the abiding pity of childhood that so few mothers have been poets! Mrs. Meynell has an entire volume dedicated to The Children, and sealed with that gracious understanding of child-life which nothing other than experience can quite authenticate. It is so easy to sentimentalise over children — easy, also, to regard them as necessary nuisances: but to bear with them consistently, in a spirit of love and of discovery, is a beautiful achievement. Fellow travellers with a bird (as Alice Meynell felicitously calls the protective adults) may learn strange and hidden things, an they have eyes to see or hearts to understand. Not so impatiently will they frown upon the strange excitement which sparkles from the child’s eyes, as from the kitten’s at dusk — inherited memories of the immemorial hunt, and of the predatory dark a thousand years ago. Not so surprising will seem the eternal conflict of bed-time, if they once realise the humorous and pretty fact that the little creature is pursued and overtaken by sleep, caught, surprised, and overcome. He goes no more to sleep than he takes a ‘constitutional’ with his hoop and hoopstick. In The Child of Tumult Mrs. Meynell has given a most tenderly subtle study; and here is her word upon the forgiveness of children: —

      It is assuredly in the absence of resentment that consists the virtue of childhood. What other thing are we to learn of them? Not simplicity, for they are intricate enough. Not gratitude, for their usual sincere thanklessness makes half the pleasure of doing them good. Not obedience, for the child is born with the love of liberty. And as for humility, the boast of a child is the frankest thing in the world. . . . It is the sweet and entire forgiveness of children, who ask pity for their sorrows from those who have caused them, who do not perceive that they are wronged, who never dream that they are forgiving, and who make no bargain for apologies — it is this that men and women are urged to learn of a child. Graces more confessedly childlike they make shift to teach themselves.

      Many a man, and many a woman, have written more nobly than they have lived: into the art has gone the truest part of the soul. But what unique conviction breathes from work which is at one with life — nay, which is the fruit of deep and costly living! The acuteness, the activity, the profundity of Mrs. Meynell’s thought could not fail to achieve their own place in English letters. But her sympathy and her eternal rightness of vision are qualities in which we rejoice, humbled. These have given to her work that peculiar intuitive truth which is the rarest of beauties. Her manner, wrote Mr. George Meredith, presents to me the image of one accustomed to walk in holy places and keep the eye of a fresh mind on our tangled world. But no single virtue of all Mrs. Meynell’s work is of the obvious or popular kind. Her pages are packed with thought, and the style — one of exceptional precision and exceptional beauty — is yet given to ellipse, to suggestion rather than emphasis, and to a quite inalienable subtlety. She speaks to the higher, even the highest, faculties of the mind. She has pleaded all along for singularity of soul, for distinction and elevation of personality, for the rejection of many things from our multitudinous modern life.

      Sometimes, as in Decivilised, it is with the trenchant wit and irony that her sentence has been passed:

      The difficulty of dealing — in the course of any critical duty — with decivilised man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity — sparing him, no doubt, the word — he defends himself against the charge of barbarism. Especially from new soil — transatlantic, colonial — he faces you, bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded of his own youthfulness of race. He writes — and recites — poems about ranches and canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. . . . American fancy played long this pattering part of youth. The New Englander hastened to assure you, with so self-denying a face, he did not wear war-paint and feathers, that it became doubly difficult to communicate to him that you had suspected him of nothing wilder than a second-hand dress coat. And when it was a question not of rebuke but of praise, the American was ill-content with the word of the judicious who lauded him for some delicate successes in continuing something of the literature of England, something of the art of France. . . . Even now English voices, with violent commonplace, are constantly calling upon America to begin — to begin, for the world is expectant — whereas, there is no beginning for her, but, instead, a continuity which only a constant care can guide into sustained refinement and can save from decivilisation. . . . Who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilised have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. . . . They were born into some tendency to derogation, into an inclination for things mentally inexpensive.

      But oftener the word has been spoken gently, almost casually; that the multitude seeing might not see, and hearing might not understand. Yet this attitude of Mrs. Meynell’s is as far as possible from disdain. For the narrow house, the obtuse mind baffled and inarticulate, for the shackled body, the groping soul, she has spoken with largest sympathy. Further than Charles Lamb’s goes her defence of beggars — since she pleads their right not simply to free existence but to a common and fraternal courtesy. All the great and elemental things of life have claimed allegiance from Alice Meynell; her mind, like Raphael’s, a temple for all lovely things to flock to and inhabit. Love and the bond of love, the grace and gaiety of life, the woman’s need of a free and educated courage, the delicacies of friendship — one finds their praise upon her reticent lips: these, with unflinching truth to self, and a faith lofty and exquisite. For the pathos of the sentimentalist (ubiquitous and not without a suspicion of the ready-made) our artist has shown slight patience. She will not laugh at her fellow-men; neither will she insist upon weeping over them. There is restraint, composure in her dream of life. Yet perchance we open the fortuitous page, and some such lines as these face us:

      It is a curious slight to generous Fate that man should, like a child, ask for one thing many times. Her answer every time is a resembling but new and single gift; until the day when she shall make the one tremendous difference among her gifts — and make it perhaps in secret — by naming one of them the ultimate. What, for novelty? what, for singleness? what, for separateness, can equal the last? Of many thousand kisses the poor last — but even the kisses of your mouth are all numbered.

      It is as old — as sweet and as sad — as the world!

      Art to Mrs. Meynell has been a thrice-holy thing; a vocation of priestly dignity, of priestly pain, as her poems witnessed. More than once have her words likened the convent-bell, imperious, not to be foregone, to the poet’s elect fetters. Within the gate of these laws which seem so small, she tells us, lies the world of mystic virtue. Now here is a viewpoint of the highest and rarest insight. What urbanity, what sweetness, what prevailing harmony it carries into the troublous matter of living. It has attained perspective: and perspective is the end as well as the means of life. Surely it is for this prize alone that we wrestle and run. To treat life in the spirit of art — that, declared another artist-seer, Walter Pater, is not far from the summum bonum: not far from the kingdom of Heaven, one might add, since the ultimate artist is God alone.

      Truth, then, has been the first of Mrs. Meynell’s equipments. First truth of seeing (which only the few may ever attain), and then truth of speaking — a rare enough accomplishment. With her work, as with that of Henry James, the fancied obscurity rises mainly from this exceedingly delicate truthfulness; a fastidious requirement of the word — the word — without exaggeration, without superfluity — only with Mr. James this desire has led to repetition; with Mrs. Meynell, to reticence. Having called her contemplative, we now perceive her to be ascetic. The little less, both in matter and manner, has seemed to her a counsel of perfection.

      Only we, the losers, would quarrel now and again with this perfect abstinence — would drink oftener, if that might be, from a spring of such diamond clearness, of such depth and healing. The fields of modern literature had been more flowery for such nourishment! In all truth, modern thought must needs bear both blossom and fruit because of its shy visits. For Alice Meynell has been very potent in her reserves. She has borne the pennant of the Ideal, with never a dip of the banner, over many a causeway, up many a battle-mented height. She has, by many and by One, been found faithful. Scarcely shall we find a more adequate praise for this English writer than her own praise of the Spanish Velasquez — that she has kept the chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty.

      THE END

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      Meynell, c. 1875

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      The poet’s husband, Wilfrid Meynell, 1916 — they were married in 1877 and had eight children, including Francis Meynell (1891-1975), who became a poet and a printer that co-founded The Nonesuch Press.

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      The poet Francis Thompson at the age of 19 — Meynell was an important friend and patron of Thompson.

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      Women Writer’s Suffrage League postcard from 1910 — Meynell was a vice-president of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, founded by Cicely Hamilton.

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      Portrait of Coventry Patmore, by John Singer Sargent, 1894 — Meynell had a deep friendship with Patmore, lasting several years, which led to his becoming obsessed with her, forcing her to break with him.

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      Meynell by John Singer Sargent, 1894

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      Meynell in later years

      Complete Poetical Works of Alice Meynell

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      CONTENTS

      Early Poems

      IN EARLY SPRING

      TO THE BELOVED

      AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL

      IN AUTUMN

      PARTED

      SOEUR MONIQUE

      REGRETS

      THE VISITING SEA

      AFTER A PARTING

      BUILDERS OF RUINS

      Sonnets and Other Poems

      THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION

      THE GARDEN

      YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH

      THE YOUNG NEOPHYTE; OR, A YOUNG CONVERT.

      SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS

      IN FEBRUARY

      A SHATTERED LUTE

      RENOUNCEMENT

      TO A DAISY

      SAN LORENZO’S MOTHER

      THE LOVER URGES THE BETTER THRIFT

      CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT

      SONG OF THE NIGHT AT DAYBREAK

      A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE

      ADVENT MEDITATION

      A POET’S FANCIES

      THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS

      TO ANY POET

      TO ONE POEM IN A SILENT TIME

      THE MOON TO THE SUN

      THE SPRING TO THE SUMMER

      THE DAY TO THE NIGHT

      A POET OF ONE MOOD

      A SONG OF DERIVATIONS

      SINGERS TO COME

      UNLINKED

      Later Poems

      THE SHEPHERDESS

      THE TWO POETS

      THE LADY POVERTY

      NOVEMBER BLUE

      A DEAD HARVEST

      THE WATERSHED

      THE JOYOUS WANDERER

      THE RAINY SUMMER

      THE ROARING FROST

      WEST WIND IN WINTER

      THE FOLD

      WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?

      VENERATION OF IMAGES

      I AM THE WAY

      VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA

      PARENTAGE

      THE MODERN MOTHER

      UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN

      VENI CREATOR

      TWO BOYHOODS

      TO SYLVIA

      SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

      CHIMES

      A POET’S WIFE

      MESSINA, 1908

      THE UNKNOWN GOD

      A GENERAL COMMUNION

      THE FUGITIVE

      IN PORTUGAL, 1912

      THE CRUCIFIXION

      THE NEWER VAINGLORY

      IN MANCHESTER SQUARE

      MATERNITY

      THE FIRST SNOW

      THE COURTS

      THE LAUNCH

      TO THE BODY

      THE UNEXPECTED PERIL

      CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE

      BEYOND KNOWLEDGE

      EASTER NIGHT

      A FATHER OF WOMEN

      LENGTH OF DAYS

      NURSE EDITH CAVELL

      SUMMER IN ENGLAND, 1914

      TO TINTORETTO IN VENICE

      A THRUSH BEFORE DAWN

      THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES OF BIRTH, 1864; OF DEATH, 1916

      TO O —— , OF HER DARK EYES

      THE TREASURE

      A WIND OF CLEAR WEATHER IN ENGLAND

      IN SLEEP

      THE DIVINE PRIVILEGE

      FREE WILL

      THE TWO QUESTIONS

      THE LORD’S PRAYER

      Last Poems

      THE POET AND HIS BOOK

      INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

      THE WIND IS BLIND

      TIME’S REVERSALS

      THE THRESHING MACHINE

      WINTER TREES ON THE HORIZON

      TO SLEEP

      THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS

      IN HONOUR OF AMERICA, 1917

      LORD, I OWE THEE A DEATH — Richard Hooker

      REFLECTIONS

      TO CONSCRIPTS

      THE VOICE OF A BIRD

      THE QUESTION

      THE LAWS OF VERSE

      THE RETURN TO NATURE

      TO SILENCE

      THE ENGLISH METRES

      RIVERS UNKNOWN TO SONG — James Thomson

      TO THE MOTHER OF CHRIST THE SON OF MAN

      A COMPARISON IN A SEASIDE FIELD

      SURMISE

      TO ANTIQUITY

      CHRISTMAS NIGHT

      THE OCTOBER REDBREAST

      TO A CERTAIN RICH MAN

      EVERLASTING FAREWELLS

      THE POET TO THE BIRDS

      AT NIGHT

      Early Poems Excluded by Meynell from The Collected Poems (1913)

      TO THE BELOVED DEAD — A LAMENT

      PYGMALION

      A TRYST THAT FAILED

      THE POETS

      TO A LOST MELODY

      SONNET. AT A POET’S GRAVE

      SONNET. THE POET TO NATURE

      THE POET TO HIS CHILDHOOD

      A STUDY: IN THREE MONOLOGUES, WITH INTERRUPTIONS

      TO TWO TRAVELLERS

      A DAY AND A LIFE

      THE GIRL ON THE LAND

      AENIGMA CHRISTI

      Early Poems that First Appeared in the Oxford Edition (1940)

      SONG OF THE SOUL OF THE ORGAN

      WIND-SONG TO THE HILL

      TO A READER WHO SHOULD LOVE ME

      A CENOTAPH

      ON KEATS’S GRAVE

      POEMS FIRST COLLECTED IN 1946

      THE SUNDERLAND CHILDREN

      MISFORTUNE

      Early Poems

      IN EARLY SPRING

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      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.

      Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell

                  The cuckoo’s fitful bell.

      I wander in a grey time that encloses

                  June and the wild hedge-roses.

      A year’s procession of the flowers doth pass

                  My feet, along the grass.

      And all you wild birds silent yet, I know

                  The notes that stir you so,

      Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear

                  Beginnings of the year.

      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 world inspired.

      O all brown birds, compose your old song-phrases,

                  Earth, thy familiar daisies!

      A poet mused upon the dusky height,

                  Between two stars towards night,

      His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space,

                  The meaning of his face:

      There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,

                  Hid in his grey young eyes.

      My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,

                  And wonder for his voice.

      Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire

                  But to divine his lyre?

      Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,

                  But he is lord of his.

      TO THE BELOVED

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      Oh, not more subtly silence strays

          Amongst the winds, between the voices,

      Mingling alike with pensive lays,

          And with the music that rejoices,

      Than thou art present in my days.

      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!

      Thou art like silence all unvexed,

          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;

      Trance between laughters unawares:

          Thou art the shape of melodies,

      And thou the ecstasy of prayers!

      AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL

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      There’s a feast undated, yet

          Both our true lives hold it fast, —

      Even the day when first we met.

          What a great day came and passed,

        — Unknown then, but known at last.

      And we met: You knew not me,

          Mistress of your joys and fears;

      Held my hand that held the key

          Of the treasure of your years,

          Of the fountain of your tears.

      For you knew not it was I,

          And I knew not it was you.

      We have learnt, as days went by.

          But a flower struck root and grew

          Underground, and no one knew.

      Day of days! Unmarked it rose,

          In whose hours we were to meet;

      And forgotten passed. Who knows,

          Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet,

          At the coming of your feet?

      One mere day, we thought; the measure

          Of such days the year fulfils.

      Now, how dearly would we treasure

          Something from its fields, its rills,

          And its memorable hills.

      IN AUTUMN

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      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;

          The birds sing all for pain,

      Of a common thing, to weary ears, —

          Only a summer’s fate of rain,

      And a woman’s fate of tears.

      I walk to love and life alone

          Over these mournful places,

      Across the summer overthrown,

          The dead joys of these silent faces,

      To claim my own.

      I know his heart has beat to bright

          Sweet loves gone by;

      I know the leaves that die to-night

          Once budded to the sky;

      And I shall die from his delight.

      O leaves, so quietly ending now,

          You heard the cuckoos sing.

      And I will grow upon my bough

          If only for a Spring,

      And fall when the rain is on my brow.

      O tell me, tell me ere you die,

          Is it worth the pain?

      You bloomed so fair, you waved so high;

          Now that the sad days wane,

      Are you repenting where you lie?

      I lie amongst you, and I kiss

          Your fragrance mouldering.

      O dead delights, is it such bliss,

          That tuneful Spring?

      Is love so sweet, that comes to this?

      Kiss me again as I kiss you;

          Kiss me again,

      For all your tuneful nights of dew,

          In this your time of rain,

      For all your kisses when Spring was new.

      You will not, broken hearts; let be.

          I pass across your death

      To a golden summer you shall not see,

          And in your dying breath

      There is no benison for me.

      There is an autumn yet to wane,

          There are leaves yet to fall,

      Which, when I kiss, may kiss again,

          And, pitied, pity me all for all,

      And love me in mist and rain.

      PARTED

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      Farewell to one now silenced quite,

      Sent out of hearing, out of sight, —

          My friend of friends, whom I shall miss.

          He is not banished, though, for this, —

      Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight.

      Though I shall talk with him no more,

      A low voice sounds upon the shore.

          He must not watch my resting-place,

          But who shall drive a mournful face

      From the sad winds about my door?

      I shall not hear his voice complain,

      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;

          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?

          I shall not have him at my feet,

      And yet my feet are on the flowers.

      SOEUR MONIQUE

      A Rondeau by Couperin

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      Quiet form of silent nun,

      What has given you to my inward eyes?

      What has marked you, unknown one,

      In the throngs of centuries

      That mine ears do listen through?

      This old master’s melody

      That expresses you;

      This admired simplicity,

      Tender, with a serious wit;

      And two words, the name of it,

              Soeur Monique.

      And if sad the music is,

      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;

      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.

      But two words, and this sweet air.

                  Soeur Monique,

      Had he more, who set you there?

      Was his music-dream of you

      Of some perfect nun he knew,

      Or of some ideal, as true?

      And I see you where you stand

      With your life held in your hand

      As a rosary of days.

      And your thoughts in calm arrays,

      And your innocent prayers are told

      On your rosary of days.

      And the young days and the old

      With their quiet prayers did meet

      When the chaplet was complete.

      Did it vex you, the surmise

      Of this wind of words, this storm of cries,

          Though you kept the silence so

          In the storms of long ago,

          And you keep it, like a star?

        — Of the evils triumphing,

      Strong, for all your perfect conquering,

          Silenced conqueror that you are?

      And I wonder at your peace, I wonder.

      Would it trouble you to know,

      Tender soul, the world and sin

      By your calm feet trodden under

          Long ago,

      Living now, mighty to win?

      And your feet are vanished like the snow.

      Vanished; but the poet, he

      In whose dream your face appears,

      He who ranges unknown years

      With your music in his heart,

      Speaks to you familiarly

      Where you keep apart,

      And invents you as you were.

      And your picture, O my nun!

      Is a strangely easy one,

      For the holy weed you wear,

      For your hidden eyes and hidden hair,

      And in picturing you I may

      Scarcely go astray.

      O the vague reality,

      The mysterious certainty!

      O strange truth of these my guesses

      In the wide thought-wildernesses!

       — Truth of one divined of many flowers;

      Of one raindrop in the showers

      Of the long ago swift rain;

      Of one tear of many tears

      In some world-renowned pain;

      Of one daisy ‘mid the centuries of sun;

      Of a little living nun

      In the garden of the years.

      Yes, I am not far astray;

      But I guess you as might one

      Pausing when young March is grey,

      In a violet-peopled day;

      All his thoughts go out to places that he knew,

      To his child-home in the sun,

      To the fields of his regret,

      To one place i’ the innocent March air,

      By one olive, and invent

      The familiar form and scent

      Safely; a white violet

      Certainly is there.

      Soeur Monique, remember me.

      ’Tis not in the past alone

      I am picturing you to be;

      But my little friend, my own,

      In my moment, pray for me.

      For another dream is mine,

      And another dream is true,

                  Sweeter even,

      Of the little ones that shine

      Lost within the light divine, —

      Of some meekest flower, or you,

                  In the fields of heaven.

      REGRETS

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      As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour

          Out by the low sand spaces,

      The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore

          With lingering embraces, —

      So in the tide of life that carries me

          From where thy true heart dwells,

      Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee

          With lessening farewells;

      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?

      THE VISITING SEA

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      As the inhastening tide doth roll,

      Home from the deep, along the whole

          Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,

        — Your love comes filling with happy waves

      The open sea-shore of my soul.

      But inland from the seaward spaces,

      None knows, not even you, the places

          Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,

        — The little solitudes of delight

      This tide constrains in dim embraces.

      You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,

      But know not of the quiet dimmed

          Rivers your coming floods and fills,

          The little pools ‘mid happier hills,

      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.

      AFTER A PARTING

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      Farewell has long been said; I have foregone thee;

          I never name thee even.

      But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?

          For thou art so near Heaven

      That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

      Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;

          My trembling thoughts discern

      Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;

          And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn

      Unto a smile of thine.

      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.

      BUILDERS OF RUINS

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      We build with strength the deep tower wall

          That shall be shattered thus and thus.

      And fair and great are court and hall,

          But how fair — this is not for us,

      Who know the lack that lurks in all.

      We know, we know how all too bright

          The hues are that our painting wears,

      And how the marble gleams too white; —

          We speak in unknown tongues, the years

      Interpret everything aright,

      And crown with weeds our pride of towers,

          And warm our marble through with sun,

      And break our pavements through with flowers,

          With an Amen when all is done,

      Knowing these perfect things of ours.

      O days, we ponder, left alone,

          Like children in their lonely hour,

      And in our secrets keep your own,

          As seeds the colour of the flower.

      To-day they are not all unknown,

      The stars that ‘twixt the rise and fall,

          Like relic-seers, shall one by one

      Stand musing o’er our empty hall;

          And setting moons shall brood upon

      The frescoes of our inward wall.

      And when some midsummer shall be,

          Hither will come some little one

      (Dusty with bloom of flowers is he),

          Sit on a ruin i’ the late long sun,

      And think, one foot upon his knee.

      And where they wrought, these lives of ours,

          So many-worded, many-souled,

      A North-west wind will take the towers,

          And dark with colour, sunny and cold,

      Will range alone among the flowers.

      And here or there, at our desire,

          The little clamorous owl shall sit

      Through her still time; and we aspire

          To make a law (and know not it)

      Unto the life of a wild briar.

      Our purpose is distinct and dear,

          Though from our open eyes ’tis hidden.

      Thou, Time to come, shalt make it clear,

      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.

      Be patient, Time, of our delays,

          Too happy hopes, and wasted fears,

      Our faithful ways, our Wilful ways;

          Solace our labours, O our seers

      The seasons, and our bards the days;

      And make our pause and silence brim

          With the shrill children’s play, and sweets

      Of those pathetic flowers and dim,

          Of those eternal flowers my Keats

      Dying felt growing over him!

      Sonnets and Other Poems

      THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION

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      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.

      And though I fail of thy ideal of me,

      My angel falls not short. They greet each other.

          Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,

      Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.

      THE GARDEN

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      My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,

          Into thy garden; thine be happy hours

          Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,

      From root to crowning petal thine alone.

      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.

      For as these come and go, and quit our pine

          To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,

              Sing one song only from our alder-trees,

      My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,

          Flit to the silent world and other summers,

              With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

      YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH

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      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 guard all joys of yours from Time’s estranging,

          I shall be then a treasury where your gay,

              Happy, and pensive past unaltered is.

      I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,

          In which your June has never passed away.

              Walk there awhile among my memories.

      THE YOUNG NEOPHYTE; OR, A YOUNG CONVERT.

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      Who knows what days I answer for to-day?

          Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow

          This yet unfaded and a faded brow;

      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.

      O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.

          I fold to-day at altars far apart

      Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat

         I seal my love to-be, my folded art.

      I light the tapers at my head and feet,

          And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

      SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS

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      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.

      Thou lookest on me from another place;

          I touch not this day’s secret, nor the thing

              That in the silence makes thy soft eyes wild.

      IN FEBRUARY

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      Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,

          Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,

          And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;

      A poet’s face asleep in this grey morn.

      Now in the midst of the old world forlorn

          A mystic child is set in these still hours.

          I keep this time, even before the flowers,

      Sacred to all the young and the unborn:

      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.

      A SHATTERED LUTE

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      I touched the heart that loved me as a player

          Touches a lyre. Content with my poor skill,

          No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still

      I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air

      Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?)

          O he alone, alone could so fulfil

          My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.

      He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.

      The songs I knew not he resumes, set free

      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.

      RENOUNCEMENT

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      I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,

          I shun the thought that lurks in all delight —

          The thought of thee — and in the blue Heaven’s height,

      And in the sweetest passage of a song.

      O just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng

          This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;

          But it must never, never come in sight;

      I must stop short of thee the whole day long.

      But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

          When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

              And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

      Must doff my will as raiment laid away, —

          With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

              I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

      TO A DAISY

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      Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide

          Like all created things, secrets from me,

      And stand a barrier to eternity.

      And I, how can I praise thee well and wide

      From where I dwell — upon the hither side?

          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.

          Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring,

      And from a poet’s side shall read his book.

          O daisy mine, what will it be to look

              From God’s side even of such a simple thing?

      SAN LORENZO’S MOTHER

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      I had not seen my son’s dear face

      (He chose the cloister by God’s grace)

          Since it had come to full flower-time.

          I hardly guessed at its perfect prime,

      That folded flower of his dear face.

      Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears

      When on a day in many years

          One of his Order came. I thrilled,

          Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled.

      I doubted, for my mists of tears.

      His blessing be with me for ever!

      My hope and doubt were hard to sever.

        — That altered face, those holy weeds.

          I filled his wallet and kissed his beads,

      And lost his echoing feet for ever.

      If to my son my alms were given

      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;

          And all I give is given to One.

          I might mistake my dearest son,

      But never the Son who cannot change.

      THE LOVER URGES THE BETTER THRIFT

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      My Fair, no beauty of thine will last

          Save in my love’s eternity.

          Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,

      Are lost for ever — their moment past —

          Except the few thou givest to me.

      Thy sweet words vanish day by day,

          As all breath of mortality;

          Thy laughter, done, must cease to be,

      And all thy dear tones pass away,

          Except the few that sing to me.

      Hide then within my heart, O hide

          All thou art loth should go from thee.

          Be kinder to thyself and me.

      My cupful from this river’s tide

          Shall never reach the long sad sea.

      CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT

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      The child not yet is lulled to rest.

          Too young a nurse, the slender Night

      So laxly hold him to her breast

          That throbs with flight.

      He plays with her, and will not sleep.

          For other playfellows she sighs;

      An unmaternal fondness keep

          Her alien eyes.

      SONG OF THE NIGHT AT DAYBREAK

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      All my stars forsake me.

      And the dawn-winds shake me,

      Where shall I betake me?

      Whither shall I run

      Till the set of sun,

      Till the day be done?

      To the mountain-mine,

      To the boughs o’ the pine,

      To the blind man’s eyne,

      To a brow that is

      Bowed upon the knees,

      Sick with memories?

      A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE

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      Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,

      O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses

      What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.

      O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!

      O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee.

      And from the changes of my heart must make thee!

      O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.

      Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?

      And are they calm about the fall of even?

      Pause near the ending of thy long migration,

      For this one sudden hour of desolation

      Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.

      Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee

      Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,

      Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.

      Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander

      Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder

      The misty mountains of the morning yonder.

      Listen: — the mountain winds with rain were fretting,

      And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting.

      I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting.

      What part of this wild heart of mine I know not

      Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not,

      And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not.

      Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it

      Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it,

      And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it.

      Oh, in some hour of thine thy 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.

      Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses

      Upon the evening as the morning tresses,

      Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses.

      And we, so altered in our shifting phases,

      Track one another ‘mid the many mazes

      By the eternal child-breath of the daisies.

      I have not writ this letter of divining

      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.

      O hush, O hush! Thy tears my words are steeping.

      O hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping?

      Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping?

      Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her.

      Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter

      That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her:

      The one who now thy faded features guesses,

      With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses,

      With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses.

      ADVENT MEDITATION

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      Rorate coeli desuper, et nubes pluant Justum

      Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.

      No sudden thing of glory and fear

      Was the Lord’s coming; but the dear

          Slow Nature’s days followed each other

          To form the Saviour from his Mother

       — One of the children of the year.

      The earth, the rain, received the trust,

       — The sun and dews, to frame the Just.

          He drew His daily life from these,

          According to His own decrees

      Who makes man from the fertile dust.

      Sweet summer and the winter wild,

      These brought him forth, the Undefiled.

          The happy Springs renewed again

          His daily bread, the growing grain,

      The food and raiment of the Child.

      A POET’S FANCIES

      THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS

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      Like him who met his own eyes in the river,

      The poet trembles at his own long gaze

      That meets him through the changing nights and days

      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.

      His dreams are far among the silent hills;

          His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain

      With winds at night; strange recognition thrills

          His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;

      He knows again his mirth in mountain rills,

          His weary tears that touch him with the rain.

      TO ANY POET

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      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.

      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

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