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 high-way,
O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,
    Thou rood of every day!

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

A Thrush Before Dawn

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

The Lady Poverty

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

The Fold

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

Sonnet - The Love Of Narcissus

Alice Meynell, Simple Poetry

English

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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 high-way,
O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,
    Thou rood of every day!

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

Heart-Pictures

Two pictures, strangely beautiful, I hold
In Mem'ry's chambers, stored with loving care
Among the precious things I prized of old,
And hid away with tender tear and prayer
The first, an aged woman's placid face
Full of the saintly calm of well spent years,
Yet bearing in its pensive lines the trace
Of weariness, and care, and many tears.

We sat together in our Sabbath-place,
Through the hushed hours of many a holy day,
And sweet it was to watch the gentle grace
Of that bowed form with those who knelt to pray,
And lifted face, when swelled the sacred psalm,
And the rich promise of God's word was shed
Upon her waiting heart like heavenly balm,
And all our souls with angels' meat were fed.

There came a day when missing was that face, -
The form s...

Pamela S. Vining (J. C. Yule)

To O-, Of Her Dark Eyes

    Across what calm of tropic seas,
            Neath alien clusters of the nights,
    Looked, in the past, such eyes as these?
            Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!

    The generations fostered them;
            And steadfast Nature, secretwise-
    Thou seedling child of that old stem-
            Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.

    Was it a century or two
            This lovely darkness rose and set,
    Occluded by grey eyes and blue,
            And Nature feigning to forget?

    Some grandam gave a hint of it-
            So cherished was it in thy race,
    So fine a treasure to transmit
            In its perfection to thy face.

    Some father to some mothers breast
            Entrusted it, unknowi...

Alice Meynell

I Cannot Forget With What Fervid Devotion.

I cannot forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame.
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,
When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of ...

William Cullen Bryant

Blessed Among Women

To the Signora Cairoli




Blessed was she that bare,
Hidden in flesh most fair,
For all mens sake the likeness of all love;
Holy that virgins womb,
The old record saith, on whom
The glory of God alighted as a dove;
Blessed, who brought to gracious birth
The sweet-souled Saviour of a man-tormented earth.



But four times art thou blest,
At whose most holy breast
Four times a godlike soldier-saviour hung;
And thence a fourfold Christ
Given to be sacrificed
To the same cross as the same bosom clung;
Poured the same blood, to leave the same
Light on the many-folded mountain-skirts of fame.



Shall they and thou not live,
The children thou didst give
Forth of thine hands, a godlike gift, t...

Algernon Charles Swinburne

To The Picture Of A Lady.

Lady, sweet lady, I behold thee yet,
With thy pale brow, brown eyes, and solemn air,
And billowy tresses of thy golden hair,
Which once to see, is never to forget!
But for short space I gazed, with soul intent
Upon thee; and the limner's art divine,
Meantime, poured all thy spirit into mine.
But once I gazed, then on my way I went:
And thou art still before me.    Like a dream
Of what our soul has loved, and lost for ever,
Thy vision dwells with me, and though I never
May be so blest as to behold thee more,
That one short look has stamped thee in my heart,
Of my intensest life a living part,
Which time, and death, shall never triumph o'er.

Frances Anne Kemble