Alice Meynell (1847-1922). Preludes (1875). III. In Early Spring. Alfred H. Miles, ed. 1907. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century

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

Preludes (1875)
III. In Early Spring

By 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.