The Poems of Alice Meynell

								


    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


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


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