How shall I thrust thee apart
Since all my growth tends to thee night and day—
To thee faith, hope, and art?
Swift are the currents setting all one way;
They draw my life, my life, out of my heart.
Another early poem, "To the Beloved," should be quoted in contrast. Surpassingly tender and delicate is its feeling; but its reticence, its singular peace, are almost a rebuke to more vehement possessors:
Oh, not more subtly silence strays
Amongst the winds, between the voices,
Mingling alike with pensive lays,
And with the music that rejoices,
Than thou art present in my days.
······
Thou art like silence all unvexed
Though wild words part my soul from thee.
Thou art like silence unperplexed,
A secret and a mystery
Between one footfall and the next.
······
Darkness and solitude shine, for me.
For life's fair outward part are rife
The silver noises; let them be.
It is the very soul of life
Listens for thee, listens for thee.
Even for this denial, this abeyance of love, has Alice Meynell reserved her own quintessential vehemence.
All this perennial, repetitional sacrifice of the lower to the higher good was foreshadowed in her earliest verses. It is a solitariness never far from our poet's song—a wistful loneliness in the youthful stanzas; a pain high-heartedly born, welcomed,
