The Poems of Alice Meynell

								


    My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess

    With his immortal things.
I feel, I know, him.  On I press--

    He finds me 'twixt his wings.

  THE FOLD



        Behold,
The time is now!  Bring back, bring back
Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim.
O lead them from the mountain-track

    Thy frolic thoughts untold,
O bring them in--the fields grow dim--

    And let me be the fold!



        Behold,
The time is now!  Call in, O call
Thy pasturing kisses gone astray
For scattered sweets; gather them all

          To shelter from the cold.
Throng them together, close and gay,

          And let me be the fold!

  "WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?"


Why wilt thou chide,

      Who has attained to be denied?
O 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.



      O strong, O pure!
As Yea makes happier loves secure,

      I vow thee this
Unique rejection of a kiss.

    I guard for thee
This jealous sad monopoly.
I seal this honour thine; none dare
Hope for a part in thy despair.

  VENERATION OF IMAGES


Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,

    Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,
Lack, or remember; whose warm pulses beat

    With love of thine own kind:--


Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,

    Unshrined on this highway,
O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,

    Thou rood of every day!

  "I AM THE WAY"



      Thou art the Way.
Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,

      I cannot say
If Thou hadst ever met my soul.



      I cannot see--
I, child of process--if there lies

      An end for me,
Full of repose, full of replies.



      I'll not reproach
The road that winds, my feet that err,

      Access, Approach
Art Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer.

  VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA


"You never attained to Him?"  "If to attain

    Be to abide, then that may be."
"Endless the way, followed with how much pain!"

    "The way was He."

  PARENTAGE
"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 gave
So many dead unto the journeying wave,
The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.



      But those who slay
Are 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.

  THE MODERN MOTHER



      Oh, what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!

      To this misgiving breast
This child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest