The Poems of Alice Meynell

								

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


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


I


THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS


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.

  II


TO ANY POET


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 must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,

    Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.


Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store
Will be hidden on thy breast.

    Things thou longest for
Will not fear or shun thee more.


Thou shalt intimately lie
In the roots of flowers that thrust