My friend Barbara Loots and I have been exchanging thoughts about Alice Meynell, and have concluded she is one of the neglected poets of the early 20th century, and could use a revival. Now that formalism is back in fashion (at least in our little set), maybe her time has come.
Meynell was Catholic, but her religious thoughts are often strikingly original (one poem ties St. Catherine of Siena to Votes for Women). She is too often represented in anthologies by her sentimental side - chiefly the sonnet RENOUNCEMENT ("I must not think of thee...") or THE SHEPHERDESS. Here are two examples of the stronger Meynell.
"I AM THE WAY"
Thou art the Way.
Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,
I cannot say
If Thou hadst ever met my soul.
I cannot see -
I, child of process - if there lies
An end for me,
Full of repose, full of replies.
I'll not reproach
The road that winds, my feet that err.
Access, approach
Art Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer.
CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE
WIth this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young man crucified.
But not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars has heard
How he administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or his bestowals there be manifest.
But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The million forms of God those stars unroll,
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
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