| Poems by Women |
IN EARLY SPRING
Alice Meynell [1850-1922]
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
foretell
The cuckoo's fitful bell.
I wander in a gray 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 two 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 gray
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.
From: Stevenson, Burton Egbert.
The Home Book of Verse.
This poet:
[Author index]
This collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis.
Collection © 1999-2002 Jone Johnson Lewis.
Citing poems from these pages:
| Author. "Poem Title." Women's History: Poems by Women. Jone Johnson Lewis, editor. URL: (date of logon) |
