The Poems of Alice Meynell

								


  THE YOUNG NEOPHYTE


Who knows what days I answer for to-day?

    Giving the bud I give the flower.  I bow

    This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.


Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,

    Give one repose to pain I know not now,

    One check to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.


O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.

    I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils?  In their retreat



    I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,

    And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

  SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS


O'er the Campagna it is dim, warm weather;

    The Spring comes with a full heart silently,

    And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.


With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together

    Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.

    Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.


I fain would put my hands about thy face,

    Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,

      And draw thee to me like a mournful child.


Thou lookest on me from another place;

    I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing

      That in the silence makes thy soft eyes wild.

  IN FEBRUARY


Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,

    Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,

    And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;
A poet's face asleep in this grey morn.


Now in the midst of the old world forlorn

    A mystic child is set in these still hours.

    I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn:


To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,

    And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,

      And to the future of my own young art,


And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,

    My friend, to your calm face and the immortal

      Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart.

  A SHATTERED LUTE


I touched the heart that loved me as a player

    Touches a lyre.  Content with my poor skill,

    No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air


Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?)

    O he alone, alone could so fulfil

    My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.


The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!

    His part in our tune goes with him; my part


Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute

    As one with vigorous music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.

  RENOUNCEMENT


I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,

    I shun the thought that lurks in all delight--

    The thought of thee--and in the blue Heaven's height,