Some musing morning as I sing
Perhaps I’ll catch God listening,
In soft enchantment at His sill.
He’ll tell His angels to be still,
He’ll say to them in tones discreet
That there is singing in the street...
The pagan quality keeps its joyousness while transmuting it into something reverent and beautiful in such lines as “The Dancer in the Shrine.” The religious note, differently accented, may be found in the work of Alice Meynell, whose complete verse is now available in The Poems of Alice Meynell. Mrs. Meynell’s death has brought a sharp emphasis upon the rare character of her poetic gift. Alfred Noyes says she has left to the world a volume “containing only masterpieces,” but I like better the words of J. L. Garvin: “Not one of her poems but was the music of a thought as most of her essays were the fruit of perception.” Let me not quote “The Shepherdess,” so widely known and so self-expressive, but “Chimes” with its changing image and its “music of a thought” sung to perfection:
Brief, on a flying night,
From the shaken tower,
A flock of bells take flight,