Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Preludes (1875). III. In Early SpringAlice Meynell (1847–1922)
O S
In the young children’s eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can fortell
The cuckoo’s fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year’s procession of the flowers doth pass
My feet, along the grass.
And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know
The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
I have it all by heart.
I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
Hidden, and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
Alter his interval.
But not a flower or song I ponder is
My own, but memory’s.
I shall be silent in those days desired
Before a world inspired.
O dear brown birds, compose your old song-phrases,
Earth, thy familiar daisies.
Between the stars towards night,
His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space,
The meaning of his face;
There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,
Hid in his grey young eyes.
My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,
And wonder for his voice.
Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire
But to divine his lyre?
Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,
But he is lord of his.