The Poems of Alice Meynell

								

Safe from ignoble benison or ban--
These two high childhoods in the heart of man.

  TO SYLVIA


TWO YEARS OLD


Long life to thee, long virtue, long delight,

    A flowering early and late!
Long beauty, grave to thought and gay to sight,

    A distant date!


Yet, as so many poets love to sing

    (When young the child will die),
"No autumn will destroy this lovely spring,"

    So, Sylvia, I.


I'll write thee dapper verse and touching rhyme;

    "Our eyes shall not behold--"
The commonplace shall serve for thee this time:

    "Never grow old."


For there's another way to stop thy clock

    Within my cherishing heart,
To carry thee unalterable, and lock

    Thy youth apart:


Thy flower, for me, shall evermore be hid

    In this close bud of thine,
Not, Sylvia, by thy death--O God forbid!

    Merely by mine.

  SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA
Written for Strephon, who said that a woman must lean, or she should
not have his chivalry.

  The light young man who was to die,

    Stopped in his frolic by the State,
Aghast, beheld the world go by;

    But Catherine crossed his dungeon gate.


She found his lyric courage dumb,

    His stripling beauties strewn in wrecks,
His modish bravery overcome;

    Small profit had he of his sex.


On any old wife's level he,

    For once--for all.  But he alone--
Man--must not fear the mystery,

    The pang, the passage, the unknown:


Death.  He did fear it, in his cell,

    Darkling amid the Tuscan sun;
And, weeping, at her feet he fell,

    The sacred, young, provincial nun.


She prayed, she preached him innocent;

    She gave him to the Sacrificed;
On her courageous breast he leant,

    The breast where beat the heart of Christ.


He left it for the block, with cries

    Of victory on his severed breath.
That crimson head she clasped, her eyes

    Blind with the splendour of his death.


And will the man of modern years

    --Stern on the Vote--withhold from thee,
Thou prop, thou cross, erect, in tears,

    Catherine, the service of his knee?

  CHIMES


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 wing

    And flies with the cloud.

  A POET'S WIFE



      I saw a tract of ocean locked inland,

        Within a field's embrace--

      The very sea!  Afar it fled the strand,

        And 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 rest
And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost err

      Scattered through east to west,--

      Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her