A Father Of Women

                        AD SOROREM E. B.

        "Thy father was transfused into thy blood."

                                    Dryden: Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew.

                Our father works in us,
    The daughters of his manhood.    Not undone
    Is he, not wasted, though transmuted thus,
                And though he left no son.

                Therefore on him I cry
    To arm me: "For my delicate mind a casque,
    A breastplate for my heart, courage to die,
                Of thee, captain, I ask.

                "Nor strengthen only; press
    A finger on this violent blood and pale,
    Over this rash will let thy tenderness
                A while pause, and prevail.

                "And shepherd-father, thou
    Whose staff folded my thoughts before my birth,
    Control them now I am of earth, and now
                Thou art no more of earth.

                "O liberal, constant, dear!
    Crush in my nature the ungenerous art
    Of the inferior; set me high, and here,
                Here garner up thy heart."

                Like to him now are they,
    The million living fathers of the War-
    Mourning the crippled world, the bitter day-
                Whose striplings are no more.

                The crippled world!    Come then,
    Fathers of women with your honour in trust;
    Approve, accept, know them daughters of men,
                Now that your sons are dust.

Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. Born on September 11, 1847, she grew up in a literary family and published her first book of poems, "Preludes," in 1875. She married the editor Wilfrid Meynell in 1877 and joined him in literary and journalistic endeavors. Meynell's worked in the women's suffrage movement, advocating for her rights through her writings. She died on November 27, 1922, leaving behind a legacy of lyrical and meditative poetry.

Alice Meynell

Veneration Of Images

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

Sonnet

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

Sonnet - The Neophyte

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

Sonnet - My Heart Shall Be Thy Garden

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

English

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Oh that Pieria's spring^[1] would thro' my breast
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For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please,
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Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
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In the waste hour
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We watched, while on my arm -
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Dabbled in sweat the sacred head
Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:
Till the dear face turned dead,
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Parentage

    "When Augustus Caesar 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 nurslings of the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.

    But those who slay
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Alice Meynell

Father

He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame;
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Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
They thought him just a little short of God;
Oh you should have heard the way they said his name -
    'Father.'

There seemed to be a loving little prayer
In their voices, even when they called him 'Dad.'
Though the man was never heard of anywhere,
As a hero, yet you somehow understood
He was doing well his part and making good;
And you knew it, by the way his children had
    Of saying 'Father.'

He gave them neither eminence nor wealth,
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Mothers Of Men

Mothers of men--the words are good indeed in the saying,
Pride in the very sound of them, strength in the sense of them, then
Why is it their faces haunt me, wistful faces as praying
Ever some dear thing vanished and ever a hope delaying,
Mothers of Men?

Mothers of Men, most patient, tenderly slow to discover
The loss of the old allegiance that may not return again.
You give a man to the world, you give a woman a lover--
Where is your solace then when the time of giving is over,
Mothers of Men?

Mothers of Men, but surely, the title is worth the earning.
You who are brave in feigning must I ever behold you then
By the door of an empty heart with the lamp of faith still burning,
Watching the ways of life for the sight of a child returning,
Mothers of Men?

Theodosia Garrison

Parentage

"When Augustus Caesar 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 nurslings 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.

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell