The Poems of Alice Meynell

								


    Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden.
Thou, Time to come, shalt make it clear,
Undoing our work; we are children chidden

    With pity and smiles of many a year.


Who shall allot the praise, and guess

    What part is yours and what is ours?--
O years that certainly will bless

    Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers,
With ruin all our perfectness.


Be patient, Time, of our delays,

    Too happy hopes, and wasted fears,
Our faithful ways, our Wilful ways;

    Solace our labours, O our seers
The seasons, and our bards the days;


And make our pause and silence brim

    With the shrill children's play, and sweets
Of those pathetic flowers and dim,

    Of those eternal flowers my Keats
Dying felt growing over him!

  THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION


We never meet; yet we meet day by day

    Upon those hills of life, dim and immense--

    The good we love, and sleep, our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills!  And, higher than they,


Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.

    Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,

    Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.


Beyond all good I ever believed of thee,

    Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,


My angel falls not short.  They greet each other.

    Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.

  THE GARDEN


My heart shall be thy garden.  Come, my own,

    Into thy garden; thine be happy hours

    Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal thine alone.


Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown

    Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.

    But ah, the birds, the birds!  Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine?  O friend, the birds have flown.


For as these come and go, and quit our pine

    To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,

      Sing one song only from our alder-trees,


My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,

    Flit to the silent world and other summers,

      With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

  YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH


Your own fair youth, you care so little for it--

    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances

    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.


If ever, in time to come, you would explore it--

    Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,

    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.


To guard all joys of yours from Time's estranging,

    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,

      Happy, and pensive past unaltered is.


I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,

    In which your June has never passed away.

      Walk there awhile among my memories.