The Project Gutenberg eBook ofLater PoemsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Later PoemsAuthor: Alice MeynellRelease date: July 9, 2007 [eBook #22032]Language: EnglishCredits: Transcribed from the 1902 John Lane, The Bodley Head edition by David Price*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATER POEMS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Later PoemsAuthor: Alice MeynellRelease date: July 9, 2007 [eBook #22032]Language: EnglishCredits: Transcribed from the 1902 John Lane, The Bodley Head edition by David Price
Title: Later Poems
Author: Alice Meynell
Author: Alice Meynell
Release date: July 9, 2007 [eBook #22032]
Language: English
Credits: Transcribed from the 1902 John Lane, The Bodley Head edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATER POEMS ***
Transcribed from the 1902 John Lane, The Bodley Head edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
By Alice MeynellAuthor of “Poems”
London and New YorkJohn Lane, The Bodley Head1902
Copyright, 1901By John LaneAll rights reserved
university press—john wilsonand son—cambridge,u. s. a.
TO
A. T.
The Shepherdess“I am the Way”Via, et Veritas, et VitaWhy wilt Thou Chide?The Lady PovertyThe FoldCradle-song at TwilightThe Roaring FrostParentageThe Modern MotherWest Wind in WinterNovember BlueChimesUnto us a Son is givenA Dead HarvestThe Two PoetsA Poet’s WifeVeneration of ImagesAt Night
She walks—the lady of my delight—A shepherdess of sheep.Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;She guards them from the steep.She feeds them on the fragrant height,And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hills and bright,Dark valleys safe and deep.Into that tender breast at nightThe chastest stars may peep.She walks—the lady of my delight—A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight,Though gay they run and leap.She is so circumspect and right;She has her soul to keep.She walks—the lady of my delight—A shepherdess of sheep.
Thou art the Way.Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,I cannot sayIf Thou hadst ever met my soul.
I cannot see—I, child of process—if there liesAn end for me,Full of repose, full of replies.
I’ll not reproachThe way that goes, my feet that stir.Access, approach,Art Thou, time, way, and wayfarer.
“You never attained to Him?” “If to attainBe to abide, then that may be.”“Endless the way, followed with how much pain!”“The way was He.”
Why wilt thou chide,Who hast attained to be denied?Oh learn, aboveAll price is my refusal, Love.My sacred NayWas never cheapened by the way.Thy single sorrow crowns thee lordOf an unpurchasable word.
Oh strong, Oh pure!As Yea makes happier loves secure,I vow thee thisUnique rejection of a kiss.I guard for theeThis jealous sad monopoly.I seal this honour thine. None dareHope for a part in thy despair.
The Lady Poverty was fair:But she has lost her looks of late,With change of times and change of air.Ah slattern, she neglects her hair,Her gown, her shoes. She keeps no stateAs once when her pure feet were bare.
Or—almost worse, if worse can be—She scolds in parlours; dusts and trims,Watches and counts. Oh, is this sheWhom Francis met, whose step was free,Who with Obedience carolled hymns,In Umbria walked with Chastity?
Where is her ladyhood? Not here,Not among modern kinds of men;But in the stony fields, where clearThrough the thin trees the skies appear;In delicate spare soil and fen,And slender landscape and austere.
Behold,The time is now! Bring back, bring backThy flocks of fancies, wild of whim.Oh lead them from the mountain-track—Thy frolic thoughts untold.Oh bring them in—the fields grow dim—And let me be the fold.
Behold,The time is now! Call in, O callThy posturing kisses gone astrayFor scattered sweets. Gather them allTo shelter from the cold.Throng them together, close and gay,And let me be the fold!
The child not yet is lulled to rest.Too young a nurse, the slender NightSo laxly holds him to her breastThat throbs with flight.
He plays with her and will not sleep.For other playfellows she sighs;An unmaternal fondness keepHer alien eyes.
A flock of winds came winging from the North,Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forthWith a resounding call!
Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—Between what warming seas and conquering skies—And fold, and fall?
“When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people.”
“When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people.”
Ah no, not these!These, who were childless, are not they who gaveSo many dead unto the journeying wave,The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas;Not they who doomed by infallible decreesUnnumbered man to the innumerable grave.
But those who slayAre fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs,The death of innocences and despairs;The dying of the golden and the grey.The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.
Oh what a kissWith filial passion overcharged is this!To this misgiving breastThe child runs, as a child ne’er ran to restUpon the light heart and the unoppressed.
Unhoped, unsought!A little tenderness, this mother thoughtThe utmost of her meedShe looked for gratitude; content indeedWith thus much that her nine years’ love had bought.
Nay, even with less.This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,Desired ah! not so muchThanks as forgiveness; and the passing touchExpected, and the slight, the brief caress.
Oh filial lightStrong in these childish eyes, these new, these brightIntelligible stars! Their raysAre near the constant earth, guides in the maze,Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.
Another day awakes. And who—Changing the world—is this?He comes at whiles, the Winter through,West Wind! I would not missHis sudden tryst: the long, the newSurprises of his kiss.
Vigilant, I make haste to closeWith him who comes my way.I go to meet him as he goes;I know his note, his lay,His colour and his morning rose;And I confess his day.
My window waits; at dawn I harkHis call; at morn I meetHis haste around the tossing parkAnd down the softened street;The gentler light is his; the dark,The grey—he turns it sweet.
So too, so too, do I confessMy poet when he sings.He rushes on my mortal guessWith his immortal things.I feel, I know him. On I press—He finds me ‘twixt his wings.
The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a complementary tint to the air in the early evening.—Essay on London.
The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a complementary tint to the air in the early evening.—Essay on London.
O, Heavenly colour! London townHas blurred it from her skies;And hooded in an earthly brown,Unheaven’d the city lies.No longer standard-like this hueAbove the broad road flies;Nor does the narrow street the blueWear, slender pennon-wise.
But when the gold and silver lampsColour the London dew,And, misted by the winter damps,The shops shine bright anew—Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,It dyes the wide air through;A mimic sky about their feet,The throng go crowned with blue.
Brief, on a flying night,From the shaken tower,A flock of bells take flight,And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,Abrupt—O hark!A fleet of bells set sails,And go to the dark.
Sudden the cold airs swing.Alone, aloud,A verse of bells takes wingAnd flies with the cloud.
Given, not lent,And not withdrawn—once sent—This Infant of mankind, this One,Is still the little welcome Son.
New every year,New-born and newly dear,He comes with tidings and a song,The ages long, the ages long.
Even as the coldKeen winter grows not old;As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,And spring in the familiar green;
Sudden as sweetCome the expected feet.All joy is young, and new all art,And He, too, Whom we have by heart.
Along the graceless grass of townThey rake the rows of red and brown,Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay,Delicate, neither gold nor grey,Raked long ago and far away.
A narrow silence in the park;Between the lights a narrow dark.One street rolls on the north, and one,Muffled, upon the south doth run.Amid the mist the work is done.
A futile crop; for it the fireSmoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.So go the town’s lives on the breeze,Even as the sheddings of the trees;Bosom nor barn is filled with these.
Whose is the speechThat moves the voices of this lonely beech?Out of the long West did this wild wind come—Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,Ready and dumb, untilThe dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.
Two memories,Two powers, two promises, two silencesClosed in this cry, closed in these thousand leavesArticulate. This sudden hour retrievesThe purpose of the past,Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last.
“Whose is the word?Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?”“Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!”“Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,Thou visitant divine.”“O thou my Voice, the word was thine.”“Was thine.”
I saw a tract of ocean locked in-landWithin a field’s embrace—The very sea! Afar it fled the strandAnd gave the seasons chase,And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,Saw sunrise face to face.
O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!In inaccessible restAnd storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir,Scattered through east to west,—Now, while thou closest with the kiss of herWho locks thee to her breast.
Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beatWith love of thine own kind;
Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,Unshrined on this high-way,O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,Thou rood of every day!
Home, home from the horizon far and clear,Hither the soft wings sweep;Flocks of the memories of the day draw nearThe dovecote doors of sleep.
O which are they that come through sweetest lightOf all these homing birds?Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight?Your words to me, your words!