Читать книгу Preludes - Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell - Страница 5

TO A POET

Table of Contents

For other versions of this work, see To Any Poet.

​

TO A POET.

Table of Contents

Thou who singest through the earth,

All the earth's wild creatures fly thee.

Everywhere thou marrest mirth.

Dumbly they defy thee.

There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever

For the unfallen Nature sweet.

But she shuns thy long endeavour,

Though her flowers and wheat

Throng and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,

Press thy face to grass and flowers,

All these things reserve above thee

Secrets in the bowers,

Secrets in the sun and showers.

​Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.

In thy songs must wind and tree

Bear the fictions of thy sadness,

Thy humanity.

For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,

Many a hoarded winter-store

Will be hidden on thy breast.

Things thou longest for

Will not fear or shun thee more.

Thou shalt intimately lie

In the roots of flowers that thrust

Upwards from thee to the sky,

With no more distrust,

When they blossom from thy dust.

Silent labours of the rain

Shall be near thee, reconciled;

Little lives of leaves and grain,

All things shy and wild

Tell thee secrets, quiet child.

​Earth, set free from thy fair fancies

And the art thou shalt resign,

Will bring forth her rue and pansies

Unto more divine

Thoughts than any thoughts of thine.

Nought will fear thee, humbled creature.

There will lie thy mortal burden

Pressed unto the heart of Nature,

Songless in a garden,

With a long embrace of pardon.

Then the truth all creatures tell,

And His will whom thou entreatest,

Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell

Silence, the completest

Of thy poems, last, and sweetest.