The Blog from the Core - Three by Meynell VI

Core: noun, the most important part of a thing, the essence; from the Latin cor, meaning heart.

		The Weblog at The View from the Core - Sun. 02/20/05 11:46:54 AM


		Three by Meynell VI Three poems by Alice Meynell. A Song of Derivations I come from nothing; but from where Come the undying thoughts I bear? Down, through long links of death and birth, From the past poets of the earth, My immortality is there. I am like the blossom of an hour. But long, long vanished sun and shower Awoke my breath i' the young world's air; I track the past back everywhere Through seed and flower and seed and flower. Or I am like a stream that flows Full of the cold springs that arose In morning lands, in distant hills; And down the plain my channel fills With melting of forgotten snows. Voices, I have not heard, possessed My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed With relics of the far unknown. And mixed with memories not my own The sweet streams throng into my breast. Before this life began to be, The happy songs that wake in me Woke long ago and far apart. Heavily on this little heart Presses this immortality. The Young Neophyte Who knows what days I answer for to-day? Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow This yet unfaded and a faded brow; Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray. Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way, Give one repose to pain I know not now, One check to joy that comes, I guess not how. I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey. O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat. I fold to-day at altars far apart Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat I seal my love to-be, my folded art. I light the tapers at my head and feet, And lay the crucifix on this silent heart. 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 Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder The misty mountains of the morning yonder. Listen:—the mountain winds with rain were fretting, And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting. I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting. What part of this wild heart of mine I know not Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not, And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not. Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it, And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it. Oh, in some hour of thine thy thoughts shall guide thee. Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence, hide thee, This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee,— Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden, With thy regrets was morning over-shaden, With sorrow, thou hast left, her life was laden. But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee? Life changes, and the years and days renew thee. Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee. Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses Upon the evening as the morning tresses, Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses. And we, so altered in our shifting phases, Track one another 'mid the many mazes By the eternal child-breath of the daisies. I have not writ this letter of divining To make a glory of thy silent pining, A triumph of thy mute and strange declining. Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded. Only one morning, and the day was clouded. And one old age with all regrets is crowded. O hush, O hush! Thy tears my words are steeping. O hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping? Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping? Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her. Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her: The one who now thy faded features guesses, With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses, With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses. (all from "Early Poems") The Poems of Alice Meynell: Complete Edition (1923), pp. 44, 24, 34ff. The book is on line here. See also Three by Meynell V: Three poems by Alice Meynell. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/20/05 11:46:54 AM Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.

Cor ad cor loquitur — J. H. Newman — “Heart speaks to heart”