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 way that goes, my feet that stir.
    Access, approach,
Art Thou, time, way, and wayfarer.

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

After A Parting

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

A Father Of Women

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

A Letter From A Girl To Her Own Old Age

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries: Of Birth, 1864: Of Death, 1916.

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

English

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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 way that goes, my feet that stir.
    Access, approach,
Art Thou, time, way, and wayfarer.

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

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."

Alice Meynell

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."

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

After A Parting

Farewell has long been said; I have forgone thee;
    I never name thee even.
But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?
    For thou art so near Heaven
That heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;
    My trembling thoughts discern
Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;
    And if I turn from but one sin, I turn
Unto a smile of thine.

How shall I thrust thee apart
    Since all my growth tends to thee night and day-
To thee faith, hope, and art?
    Swift are the currents setting all one way;
They draw my life, my life, out of my heart.

Alice Meynell

The Poet To His Childhood

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
-Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
    When you thought, and chose the hills.

'If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music's sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
    Unconsoled by sympathy.'

But how dared you use me so? For you bring my ripe years low
To your child's whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
    But you mark not, through the years.

'To the mountain leads my way. If the plains are green to-day,
These my barren hi...

Alice Meynell

Free Will

    Dear are some hidden things
            My soul has sealed in silence; past delights,
    Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
            Remembered in the nights.

    But my best treasures are
            Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
    Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
            No reliquaries hold.

    There lie my trespasses,
            Abjured but not disowned.    Ill not accuse
    Determinism, nor, as the Master {26} says,
            Charge even "the poor Deuce."

    Under my hand they lie,
            My very own, my proved iniquities,
    And though the glory of my life go by
            I hold and garner these.

    How else, how otherwhere.
            How otherwise, shall I discern and grope<...

Alice Meynell