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.

September 11, 1847

November 27, 1922

English

Alice Meynell

Page 1 of 5

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, neither gold nor 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.

Alice Meynell

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 she...

Alice Meynell

A Letter From A Girl To Her Own Old Age

Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.

O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.

O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?

Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.

Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.

Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander

Alice Meynell

A Poet's Sonnet

If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
    To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
    To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?

Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
    My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping?
    No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.

From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
    And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
    Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.

Through my indifferent words of every day,
    Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring
    And make my poem; and I shall not know.

Alice Meynell

A Poet's Wife

I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land
    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 stir,
    Scattered through east to west, -
Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her
    Who locks thee to her breast.

Alice Meynell

A Thrush Before Dawn

    A voice peals in this end of night
            A phrase of notes resembling stars,
    Single and spiritual notes of light.
            What call they at my window-bars?
                The South, the past, the day to be,
                An ancient infelicity.

    Darkling, deliberate, what sings
            This wonderful one, alone, at peace?
    What wilder things than song, what things
            Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece,
                Dearer than Italy, untold
                Delight, and freshness centuries old?

    And first first-loves, a multitude,
            The exaltation of their pain;
    Ancestral childhood long renewed;
            And midnights of invisible rain;
                And gardens, gardens, night and...

Alice Meynell

A Wind Of Clear Weather In England

    O what a miracle wind is this
            Has crossed the English land to-day
    With an unprecedented kiss,
            And wonderfully found a way!

    Unsmirched incredibly and clean,
            Between the towns and factories,
    Avoiding, has his long flight been,
            Bringing a sky like Sicilys.

    O fine escape, horizon pure
            As Romes!    Black chimneys left and right,
    But not for him, the straight, the sure,
            His luminous day, his spacious night.

    How keen his choice, how swift his feet!
            Narrow the way and hard to find!
    This delicate stepper and discreet
            Walked not like any worldly wind.

    Most like a man in mans own day,
            One of the fe...

Alice 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

An Unmarked Festival

There's a feast undated yet:
    Both our true lives hold it fast,-
The first day we ever met.
    What a great day came and passed!
    -Unknown then, but known at last.

And we met: You knew not me,
    Mistress of your joys and fears;
Held my hands that held the key
    Of the treasure of your years,
    Of the fountain of your tears.

For you knew not it was I,
    And I knew not it was you.
We have learnt, as days went by.
    But a flower struck root and grew
    Underground, and no one knew.

Days of days! Unmarked it rose,
    In whose hours we were to meet;
And forgotten passed. Who knows,
    Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet,
    At the coming of your feet?

One mere day, we thought; the measure
    Of such ...

Alice Meynell

At Night

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.

O 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!

Alice Meynell

Builders Of Ruins

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
    That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
    But how fair-this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.

We know, we know how all too bright
    The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;-
    We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,

And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
    And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
    With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.

O days, we ponder, left alone,
    Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
    As seeds the colour of the flower.

Alice Meynell

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.

Alice Meynell

Cradle-Song At Twilight

The child not yet is lulled to rest.
    Too young a nurse, the slender Night
So laxly holds him to her breast
    That throbs with flight.

He plays with her and will not sleep.
    For other playfellows she sighs;
An unmaternal fondness keep
    Her alien eyes.

Alice Meynell

Easter Night

    All night had shout of men and cry
                Of woeful women filled His way;
    Until that noon of sombre sky
                On Friday, clamour and display
    Smote Him; no solitude had He,
    No silence, since Gethsemane.

    Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
                But Life again, but Victory,
    Were hushed within the dead of night,
                The shutterd dark, the secrecy.
    And all alone, alone, alone
    He rose again behind the stone.

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

Future Poetry

No new delights to our desire
    The singers of the past can yield.
    I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
    Poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
    To song? what words of yours be sent
    Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
    Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
    Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
    And crown these towers in circling flight
And cross these seas like summer birds,
    And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
    Some mystic part of you belongs
    To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flo...

Alice Meynell

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

In Autumn

The leaves are many under my feet,
    And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
    A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
    The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,-
    Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
    Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
    The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
    Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
    Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
    You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I w...

Alice Meynell

Page 1 of 5