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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

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

By Preludes (1875). III. In Early Spring

Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

  • “L’océan connu, l’âme reste ô sonder.”
  • VICTOR HUGO.

  • O SPRING, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise

    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.

    The poet mused upon the dusky height,

    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.