Later Poems

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Title: Later Poems
Author: Alice Meynell
Release Date: July 9, 2007 [eBook #22032]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATER
POEMS***
Transcribed from the 1902 John Lane, The Bodley Head edition by
David Price, email [email protected]
Later Poems
By Alice Meynell
Author of "Poems"
London and New York
John Lane, The Bodley Head
1902
_Copyright_, 1901
BY JOHN LANE
_All rights reserved_
UNIVERSITY PRESS--JOHN WILSON
AND
SON--CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO

0. T.
Contents:
The Shepherdess
"I am the Way"
Via, et Veritas, et Vita
Why wilt
Thou Chide?
The Lady Poverty
The Fold
Cradle-song at Twilight

The Roaring Frost
Parentage
The Modern Mother
West Wind
in Winter
November Blue
Chimes
Unto us a Son is given
A
Dead Harvest
The Two Poets
A Poet's Wife
Veneration of Images

At Night
THE SHEPHERDESS
She walks--the lady of my delight--
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them
white;
She guards them from the steep.
She feeds them on the fragrant
height,
And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night
The chastest stars may peep.
She walks--the lady of my delight--
A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.
She walks--the lady of my delight--
A shepherdess of sheep.

"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.
VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA
"You never attained to Him?" "If to attain
Be to abide, then that may be."
"Endless the way, followed with how
much pain!"
"The way was He."
"WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?"
Why wilt thou chide,
Who hast attained to be denied?
Oh learn, above
All price is my refusal, Love.
My sacred Nay
Was never cheapened by the way.
Thy single
sorrow crowns thee lord
Of an unpurchasable word.
Oh strong, Oh pure!
As Yea makes happier loves secure,
I vow thee this
Unique rejection of a kiss.
I guard for thee
This jealous sad monopoly.
I seal this honour thine.

None dare
Hope for a part in thy despair.
THE LADY POVERTY
The Lady Poverty was fair:
But she has lost her looks of late,
With
change of times and change of air.
Ah slattern, she neglects her hair,

Her gown, her shoes. She keeps no state
As once when her pure
feet were bare.
Or--almost worse, if worse can be--
She scolds in parlours; dusts and
trims,
Watches and counts. Oh, is this she
Whom Francis met,
whose step was free,
Who with Obedience carolled hymns,
In
Umbria walked with Chastity?
Where is her ladyhood? Not here,
Not among modern kinds of men;

But in the stony fields, where clear
Through the thin trees the skies
appear;
In delicate spare soil and fen,
And slender landscape and
austere.
THE FOLD
Behold,
The time is now! Bring back, bring back
Thy flocks of
fancies, wild of whim.
Oh lead them from the mountain-track--
Thy frolic thoughts untold.
Oh bring them in--the fields grow dim--
And let me be the fold.
Behold,
The time is now! Call in, O call
Thy posturing kisses gone
astray
For scattered sweets. Gather them all
To shelter from the cold.
Throng them together, close and gay,
And let me be the fold!
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.
THE ROARING FROST
A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with
fighting pinions driving forth
With a resounding call!
Where will they close their wings and cease their cries--
Between
what warming seas and conquering skies--
And fold, and fall?
PARENTAGE
"When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens of
Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people."
Ah no, not these!
These, who were childless, are not they who gave

So many dead unto the journeying wave,
The helpless nurslings of
the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees

Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.
But those who slay
Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs,

The death of innocences and despairs;
The dying of the golden and
the grey.
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.
And she
who slays is she who bears, who bears.

THE MODERN MOTHER