Collected poems of Alice Meynell

LATER POEMS

Reading edition

THE SHEPHERDESS

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;

She guards them from the steep;

She feeds them on the fragrant height,

And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,

Dark valleys safe and deep.

Into that tender breast at night

The chastest stars may peep.

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,

Though gay they run and leap.

She is so circumspect and right;

She has her soul to keep.

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep.

THE TWO POETS

Whose is the speech

That moves the voices of this lonely beech?

Out of the long west did this wild wind come—

O strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,

Ready and dumb, until

The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.

Two memories,

Two powers, two promises, two silences

Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves

Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves

The purpose of the past,

Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last.

“Whose is the word?

Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?”

“Thine earth was solitary, yet I found thee!”

“Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,

Thou visitant divine.”

“O thou my Voice, the word was thine.” “Was thine.”

THE LADY POVERTY

The Lady Poverty was fair:

But she has lost her looks of late,

With change of times and change of air.

Ah slattern! she neglects her hair,

Her gown, her shoes; she keeps no state

As once when her pure feet were bare.

Or—almost worse, if worse can be—

She scolds in parlours, dusts and trims,

Watches and counts. Oh, is this she

Whom Francis met, whose step was free

Who with Obedience carolled hymns,

In Umbria walked with Chastity?

Where is her ladyhood? Not here,

Not among modern kinds of men;

But in the stony fields, where clear

Through the thin trees the skies appear,

In delicate spare soil and fen,

And slender landscape and austere.

NOVEMBER BLUE

The golden tint of the electric lights seems to give a complementary colour to the air in the early evening.—Essay on London.

O heavenly colour, London town

Has blurred it from her skies;

And, hooded in an earthly brown,

Unheaven’d the city lies,

No longer standard-like this hue

Above the broad road flies;

Nor does the narrow street the blue

Wear, slender pennon-wise.

But when the gold and silver lamps

Colour the London dew,

And, misted by the winter damps,

The shops shine bright anew—

Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,

It dyes the wide air through;

A mimic sky about their feet,

The throng go crowned with blue

A DEAD HARVEST

IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

Along the graceless grass of town

They rake the rows of red and brown,—

Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay

Delicate, touched with gold and grey,

Raked long ago and far away.

A narrow silence in the park,

Between the lights a narrow dark.

One street rolls on the north; and one,

Muffled, upon the south doth run;

Amid the mist the work is done.

A futile crop!—for it the fire

Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.

So go the town’s lives on the breeze,

Even as the sheddings of the trees;

Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

THE WATERSHED

Lines written between Munich and Verona

Black mountains pricked with pointed pine

A melancholy sky.

Out-distanced was the German vine,

The sterile fields lay high.

From swarthy Alps I travelled forth

Aloft; it was the north, the north;

Bound for the Noon was I.

I seemed to breast the streams that day;

I met, opposed, withstood

The northward rivers on their way,

My heart against the flood—

My heart that pressed to rise and reach,

And felt the love of altering speech,

Of frontiers, in its blood.

But oh the unfolding South! the burst

Of summer! Oh to see

Of all the southward brooks the first!

The travelling heart went free

With endless streams; that strife was stopped;

And down a thousand vales I dropped,

I flowed to Italy.

THE JOYOUS WANDERER

Translated from M. Catulle Mendès

I go by road, I go by street—

Lira, la, la!

O white high roads, ye know my feet!

A loaf I carry and, all told,

Three broad bits of lucky gold—

Lira, la, la!

And oh, within my flowering heart,

(Sing, dear nightingale!) is my Sweet.

A poor man met me and begged for bread—

Lira, la, la!

“Brother, take all the loaf,” I said,

I shall but go with lighter cheer—

Lira, la, la!

And oh within my flowering heart

(Sing, sweet nightingale!) is my Dear.

A thief I met on the lonely way—

Lira, la, la!

He took my gold; I cried to him, “Stay!

And take my pocket and make an end.”

Lira, la, la!

20And oh within my flowering heart

(Sing, soft nightingale!) is my Friend.

Now on the plain I have met with death—

Lira, la, la!

My bread is gone, my gold, my breath.

But oh this heart is not afraid—

Lira, la, la!

For oh, within this lonely heart

(Sing, sad nightingale!) is my Maid.

THE RAINY SUMMER

There’s much afoot in heaven and earth this year;

The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,

Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear

Height of a threatening noon.

No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds

May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;

The forest, rooted, tosses in his bonds,

And strains against the cloud.

No scents may pause within the garden-fold;

The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;

Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold

Wild honey to cold cells.

THE ROARING FROST

A flock of winds came winging from the North,

Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth

With a resounding call:—

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—

Between what warming seas and conquering skies—

And fold, and fall?

WEST WIND IN WINTER

Another day awakes. And who—

Changing the world—is this?

He comes at whiles, the winter through,

West Wind! I would not miss

His sudden tryst: the long, the new

Surprises of his kiss.

Vigilant, I make haste to close

With him who comes my way.

I go to meet him as he goes;

I know his note, his lay,

His colour and his morning-rose,

And I confess his day.

My window waits; at dawn I hark

His call; at morn I meet

His haste around the tossing park

And down the softened street;

The gentler light is his; the dark.

The grey—he turns it sweet.

24So too, so too, do I confess

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.

Oh, lead them from the mountain-track—

Thy frolic thoughts untold.

Oh, bring them in—the fields grow dim—

And let me be the fold!

Behold,

The time is now! Call in, oh 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 hast attained to be denied?

Oh 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

Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.

Unhoped, unsought!

A little tenderness, this mother thought

The utmost of her meed.

She looked for gratitude; content indeed

With thus much that her nine years’ love had bought.

Nay, even with less.

This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,

Desired ah! not so much

Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch

Expected, and the slight, the brief caress.

O filial light

Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright

Intelligible stars! their rays

Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze,

Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.

UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN

Given, not lent,

And not withdrawn—once sent,

This Infant of mankind, this One,

Is still the little welcome Son.

New every year,

New born and newly dear,

He comes with tidings and a song,

The ages long, the ages long;

Even as the cold

Keen winter grows not old,

As childhood is so fresh, foreseen

And spring in the familiar green.

Sudden as sweet

Come the expected feet.

All joy is young, and new all art,

And He, too, Whom we have by heart.

VENI CREATOR

So humble things Thou hast borne for us, O God

Left’st Thou a path of lowliness untrod?

Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden.

For we endure the tender pain of pardon,—

One with another we forbear. Give heed,

Look at the mournful world Thou hast decreed.

The time has come. At last we hapless men

Know all our haplessness all through. Come, then,

Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven,

Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven.

TWO BOYHOODS

Luminous passions reign

High in the soul of man; and they are twain.

Of these he hath made the poetry of earth—

Hath made his nobler tears, his magic mirth.

Fair Love is one of these,

The visiting vision of seven centuries;

And one is love of Nature—love to tears—

The modern passion of this hundred years.

Oh never to such height,

Oh never to such spiritual light—

The light of lonely visions, and the gleam

Of secret splendid sombre suns in dream—

Oh never to such long

Glory in life, supremacy in song,

Had either of these loves attained in joy,

But for the ministration of a boy.

Dante was one who bare

Love in his deep heart, apprehended there

When he was yet a child; and from that day

The radiant love has never passed away.

35And one was Wordsworth; he

Conceived the love of Nature childishly

As no adult heart might; old poets sing

That exaltation by remembering.

For no divine

Intelligence, or art, or fire, or wine,

Is high-delirious as that rising lark—

The child’s soul and its daybreak in the dark.

And Letters keep these two

Heavenly treasures safe the ages through,

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:

37Thy 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.

39She 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

Who locks thee to her breast.

MESSINA, 1908

Lord, Thou hast crushed Thy tender ones, o’erthrown

Thy strong, Thy fair; Thy man Thou hast unmanned,

Thy elaborate works unwrought, Thy deeds undone,

Thy lovely sentient human plan unplanned;

Destroyer, we have cowered beneath Thine own

Immediate, unintelligible hand.

Lord, Thou hast hastened to retrieve, to heal,

To feed, to bind, to clothe, to quench the brand,

To prop the ruin, to bless and to anneal;

Hast sped Thy ships by sea, Thy trains by land,

Shed pity and tears; our shattered fingers feel

Thy mediate and intelligible hand.

THE UNKNOWN GOD

One of the crowd went up,

And knelt before the Paten and the Cup,

Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayed

Close to my side; then in my heart I said:

“O Christ, in this man’s life—

This stranger who is Thine—in all his strife,

All his felicity, his good and ill,

In the assaulted stronghold of his will,

“I do confess Thee here,

Alive within this life; I know Thee near

Within this lonely conscience, closed away

Within this brother’s solitary day.

“Christ in his unknown heart,

His intellect unknown—this love, this art,

This battle and this peace, this destiny

That I shall never know, look upon me!

44“Christ in his numbered breath,

Christ in his beating heart and in his death,

Christ in his mystery! From that secret place

And from that separate dwelling, give me grace.”

A GENERAL COMMUNION

I saw the throng, so deeply separate,

Fed at one only board—

The devout people, moved, intent, elate,

And the devoted Lord.

Oh struck apart! not side from human side,

But soul from human soul,

As each asunder absorbed the multiplied,

The ever unparted whole.

I saw this people as a field of flowers,

Each grown at such a price

The sum of unimaginable powers

Did no more than suffice.

A thousand single central daisies they,

A thousand of the one;

For each, the entire monopoly of day;

For each, the whole of the devoted sun.

THE FUGITIVE

“Nous avons chassé ce Jésus-Christ.”

—French Publicist

Yes, from the ingrate heart, the street

Of garrulous tongue, the warm retreat

Within the village and the town;

Not from the lands where ripen brown

A thousand thousand hills of wheat;

Not from the long Burgundian line,

The Southward, sunward range of vine.

Hunted, He never will escape

The flesh, the blood, the sheaf, the grape,

That feed His man—the bread, the wine.

IN PORTUGAL, 1912

And will they cast the altars down

Scatter the chalice, crush the bread?

In field, in village, and in town

He hides an unregarded head;

Waits in the corn-lands far and near,

Bright in His sun, dark in His frost,

Sweet in the vine, ripe in the ear—

Lonely unconsecrated Host.

In ambush at the merry board

The Victim lurks unsacrificed;

The mill conceals the harvest’s Lord,

The wine-press holds the unbidden Christ.

THE CRUCIFIXION

“A Paltry Sacrifice”—Preface to a Play

Oh, man’s capacity

For spiritual sorrow, corporal pain!

Who has explored the deepmost of that sea,

With heavy links of a far-fathoming chain?

That melancholy lead,

Let down in guilty and in innocent hold,

Yea into childish hands deliverèd,

Leaves the sequestered floor unreached, untold.

One only has explored

The deepmost; but He did not die of it.

Not yet, not yet He died. Man’s human Lord

Touched the extreme; it is not infinite.

But over the abyss

Of God’s capacity for woe He stayed

One hesitating hour; what gulf was this?

Forsaken He went down, and was afraid.

THE NEWER VAINGLORY

Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks,

Not with himself—aloud,

With proclamation, calling on the ranks

Of an attentive crowd.

“Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast,

But other ruffians’ backs,

Imputing crime—such is my tolerant haste—

To any man that lacks.

“For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules,

And the age honours me.

Thank God, I am not as these rigid fools,

Even as this Pharisee.”

IN MANCHESTER SQUARE

(IN MEMORIAM T.H.)

The paralytic man has dropped in death

The crossing-sweeper’s brush to which he clung,

One-handed, twisted, dwarfed, scanted of breath,

Although his hair was young.

I saw this year the winter vines of France,

Dwarfed, twisted, goblins in the frosty drouth,

Gnarled, crippled, blackened little stems askance,

On long hills to the South.

Great green and golden hands of leaves ere long

Shall proffer clusters in that vineyard wide.

And oh! his might, his sweet, his wine, his song,

His stature, since he died!

MATERNITY

One wept whose only child was dead,

New-born, ten years ago.

“Weep not; he is in bliss,” they said.

She answered, “Even so.

“Ten years ago was born in pain

A child, not now forlorn.

But oh, ten years ago, in vain,

A mother, a mother was born.”

THE FIRST SNOW

Not yet was winter come to earth’s soft floor,

The tideless wave, the warm white road, the shore,

The serried town whose small street tortuously

Led darkling to the dazzling sea.

Not yet to breathing man, not to his song,

Not to his comforted heart; not to the long

Close-cultivated lands beneath the hill.

Summer was gently with them still.

But on the Apennine mustered the cloud;

The grappling storm shut down. Aloft, aloud,

Ruled secret tempest one long day and night,

Until another morning’s light.

O tender mountain-tops and delicate,

Where summer-long the westering sunlight sate!

Within that fastness darkened from the sun,

What solitary things were done?

The clouds let go, they rose, they winged away;

Snow-white the altered mountains faced the day,

As saints who keep their counsel sealed and fast,

Their anguish over-past.

THE COURTS

A FIGURE OF THE EPIPHANY

The poets’ imageries are noble ways,

Approaches to a plot, an open shrine.

Their splendours, colours, avenues, arrays,

Their courts that run with wine;

Beautiful similes, “fair and flagrant things,”

Enriched, enamouring,—raptures, metaphors

Enhancing life, are paths for pilgrim kings

Made free of golden doors.

And yet the open heavenward plot, with dew,

Ultimate poetry, enclosed, enskyed

(Albeit such ceremonies lead thereto)

Stands on the yonder side.

Plain, behind oracles, it is; and past

All symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild,

The song some loaded poets reach at last—

The kings that found a Child.

THE LAUNCH

Forth, to the alien gravity,

Forth, to the laws of ocean, we

Builders on earth by laws of land

Entrust this creature of our hand

Upon the calculated sea.

Fast bound to shore we cling, we creep,

And make our ship ready to leap

Light to the flood, equipped to ride

The strange conditions of the tide—

New weight, new force, new world: the Deep.

Ah thus—not thus—the Dying, kissed,

Cherished, exhorted, shriven, dismissed;

By all the eager means we hold

We, warm, prepare him for the cold,

To keep the incalculable tryst.

TO THE BODY

Thou inmost, ultimate

Council of judgment, palace of decrees,

Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,

Sued by earth’s embassies,

And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create;

Create—thy senses close

With the world’s pleas. The random odours reach

Their sweetness in the place of thy repose,

Upon thy tongue the peach,

And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose.

To thee, secluded one,

The dark vibrations of the sightless skies,

The lovely inexplicit colours run;

The light gropes for those eyes.

O thou august! thou dost command the sun.

Music, all dumb, hath trod

Into thine ear her one effectual way;

And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod

Where thou call’st up the day,

Where thou awaitest the appeal of God.

THE UNEXPECTED PERIL

Unlike the youth that all men say

They prize—youth of abounding blood,

In love with the sufficient day,

And gay in growth, and strong in bud;

Unlike was mine! Then my first slumber

Nightly rehearsed my last; each breath

Knew itself one of the unknown number.

But Life was urgent with me as Death.

My shroud was in the flocks; the hill

Within its quarry locked my stone;

My bier grew in the woods; and still

Life spurred me where I paused alone.

“Begin!” Life called. Again her shout,

“Make haste while it is called to-day!”

Her exhortations plucked me out,

Hunted me, turned me, held me at bay.

But if my youth is thus hard pressed

(I thought) what of a later year?

If the end so threats this tender breast,

What of the days when it draws near?

57Draws near, and little done? yet lo,

Dread has forborne, and haste lies by.

I was beleaguered; now the foe

Has raised the siege, I know not why.

I see them troop away; I ask

Were they in sooth mine enemies—

Terror, the doubt, the lash, the task?

What heart has my new housemate, Ease?

How am I left, at last, alive,

To make a stranger of a tear?

What did I do one day to drive

From me the vigilant angel, Fear?

The diligent angel, Labour? Ay,

The inexorable angel, Pain?

Menace me, lest indeed I die,

Sloth! Turn; crush, teach me fear again!

CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE

With this ambiguous earth

His dealings have been told us. These abide:

The signal to a maid, the human birth,

The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

But not a star of all

The innumerable host of stars has heard

How He administered this terrestrial ball.

Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.

Of His earth-visiting feet

None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,

The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,

Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this

Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,

Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,

Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

59Nor, in our little day,

May His devices with the heavens be guessed,

His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way

Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But in the eternities,

Doubtless we shall compare together, hear

A million alien Gospels, in what guise

He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear

O, be prepared, my soul!

To read the inconceivable, to scan

The million forms of God those stars unroll

When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

BEYOND KNOWLEDGE

“Your sins ... shall be white as snow.”

Into the rescued world newcomer,

The newly-dead stepped up, and cried,

“Oh what is that, sweeter than summer

Was to my heart before I died?

Sir (to an angel), what is yonder

More bright than the remembered skies,

A lovelier light, a softer splendour

Than when the moon was wont to rise?

Surely no sinner wears such seeming

Even the Rescued World within?”

“O the success of His redeeming!

O child, it is a rescued sin!”

AT NIGHT

To W. M.

Home, home from the horizon far and clear,

Hither the soft wings sweep;

Flocks of the memories of the day draw near

The dovecote doors of sleep

Oh, which are they that come through sweetest light

Of all these homing birds?

Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight?

Your words to me, your words!