Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Preludes (1875). VIII. Song: “As the Inhastening Tide”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

AS the inhastening tide doth roll,

Dear and desired, upon the whole

Long shining strand, and floods the caves,

Your love comes filling with happy waves

The open sea-shore of my soul.

But inland from the seaward spaces,

None knows, not even you, the places

Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,

—The little solitudes of delight

This tide constrains in dim embraces.

You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,

But know not of the quiet dimmed

Rivers your coming floods and fills,

The little pools ’mid happier hills,

My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.

What, I have secrets from you? Yes.

But O my Sea, your love doth press

And reach in further than you know,

And fills all these; and when you go

There’s loneliness in loneliness.