Part 5

You with your morning words, Fresh from the night, your yet un-sonneted moon, Your passion undismayed, cool as a bird's Ignorant tune;

O youngling! how is this? Your poems are not wearied yet, not dead, Must I bow low? or, With an envious kiss, Put you to bed?

CHRISTMAS NIGHT

"IF I CANNOT SEE THEE PRESENT I WILL MOURN THEE ABSENT, FOR THIS ALSO IS A PROOF OF LOVE" _Thomas à Kempis_

We do not find Him on the difficult earth, In surging human-kind, In wayside death or accidental birth, Or in the "march of mind."

Nature, her nests, her prey, the fed, the caught, Hid Him so well, so well, His steadfast secret there seems to our thought Life's saddest miracle.

He's but conjectured in man's happiness, Suspected in man's tears, Or lurks beyond the long, discouraged guess, Grown fainter through the years.

* * * * *

But absent, absent now? Ah, what is this, Near as in child-birth bed, Laid on our sorrowful hearts, close to a kiss? A homeless childish head.

THE OCTOBER REDBREAST

Autumn is weary, halt, and old; Ah, but she owns the song of joy! Her colours fade, her woods are cold. Her singing-bird's a boy, a boy.

In lovely Spring the birds were bent On nests, on use, on love, forsooth! Grown-up were they. This boy's content, For his is liberty, his is youth.

The musical stripling sings for play Taking no thought, and virgin-glad. For duty sang those mates in May. This singing-bird's a lad, a lad.

TO "A CERTAIN RICH MAN"

"I HAVE FIVE BRETHREN.... FATHER, I BESEECH THEE ... LEST THEY COME TO THIS PLACE" _St. Luke's Gospel_

Thou wouldst not part thy spoil Gained from the beggar's want, the weakling's toil, Nor spare a jot of sumptuousness or state For Lazarus at the gate.

And in the appalling night Of expiation, as in day's delight, Thou heldst thy niggard hand; it would not share One hour of thy despair.

Those five--thy prayer for them! O generous! who, condemned, wouldst not condemn, Whose ultimate human greatness proved thee so A miser of thy woe.

EVERLASTING FAREWELLS

"EVERLASTING FAREWELLS! AND AGAIN, AND YET AGAIN ... EVERLASTING FAREWELLS!" _De Quincey_

"Farewells!" O what a word! Denying this agony, denying the affrights, Denying all De Quincey spoke or heard In the infernal sadness of his nights.

How mend these strange "farewells"? "Vale"? "Addio"? "Leb'wohl"? Not one but seems A tranquil refutation; tolling bells That yet behold the terror of his dreams.

THE POET TO THE BIRDS

You bid me hold my peace, Or so I think, you birds; you'll not forgive My kill-joy song that makes the wild song cease, Silent or fugitive.

Yon thrush stopt in mid-phrase At my mere footfall; and a longer note Took wing and fled afield, and went its ways Within the blackbird's throat.

Hereditary song, Illyrian lark and Paduan nightingale, Is yours, unchangeable the ages long; Assyria heard your tale;

Therefore you do not die. But single, local, lonely, mortal, new, Unlike, and thus like all my race, am I, Preluding my adieu.

My human song must be My human thought. Be patient till 'tis done. I shall not hold my little peace; for me There is no peace but one.

AT NIGHT

_To W. M._

Home, home from the horizon far and clear, Hither the soft wings sweep; Flocks of the memories of the day draw near The dovecote doors of sleep.

Oh, which are they that come through sweetest light Of all these homing birds? Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight? Your words to me, your words!

WARWICK BROS. & RUTTER LIMITED, TORONTO

PRINTERS & BOOKBINDERS

End of Project Gutenberg's The Poems of Alice Meynell, by Alice Meynell