| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | The Two Poets | | By Alice Meynell (1847–1922) |
| | | WHOSE is the speech | |
| That moves the voices of this lonely beech? | |
| Out of the long west did this wild wind come— | |
| Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, | |
| Ready and dumb, until | 5 |
| The dumb gale struck it on the darken’d hill. | |
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| Two memories, | |
| Two powers, two promises, two silences | |
| Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves | |
| Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves | 10 |
| The purpose of the past, | |
| Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last. | |
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| ‘Whose is the word? | |
| Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?’ | |
| ‘Thine earth was solitary, yet I found thee!’ | 15 |
| ‘Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee, | |
| Thou visitant divine.’ | |
| ‘O thou my Voice, the word was thine.’ ‘Was thine.’ | | | | |
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