We first met Alice Meynell on December 30, 2020. (You can look at the right to see Blog Archives, click on December and scroll down to see this post.)
Since today – September 22 – is her birthday, I thought we’d enjoy another of her poems. This, appropriately, is called “In Autumn.”
In Autumn
The leaves are many under my feet,
And drift
one way,
Their scent of death is weary and
sweet.
A
flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.
The low winds moan for dead sweet
years;
The
birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears, -
Only a
summer’s fate of rain,
And a woman’s fate of tears.
I walk to love and life alone
Over
these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
The
dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.
I know his heart has beat to bright
Sweet
loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die tonight
Once
budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.
O leaves, so quietly ending now,
You
have heard cuckoos sing.
And I will grow upon my bough
If only
for a Spring,
And fall when the rain is on my
brow.
O tell me, tell me ere you die,
Is it
worth the pain?
You bloomed so fair, you waved so
high;
Now
that the sad days wane,
Are you repenting where you lie?
I lie amongst you, and I kiss
Your
fragrance mouldering.
O dead delights, is it such bliss,
That
tuneful Spring?
Is love so sweet, that comes to
this?
O dying blisses of the year,
I hear
the young lambs bleat,
The clamouring birds i’ the copse I
hear.
I hear
the waving wheat,
Together laid on a dead-leaf bier.
Kiss me again as I kiss you;
Kiss me
again;
For all your tuneful nights of dew,
In this
your time of rain,
For all your kisses when Spring was
new.
You will not, broken hearts; let
be.
I pass
across your death
To a golden summer you shall not
see,
And in your
dying breath
There is no benison for me.
There is an autumn yet to wane,
There
are leaves yet to fall,
Which, when I kiss, may kiss again,
And,
pitied, pity me all for all,
And love me in mist and rain.
