Page:Poems, Meynell, 1921.djvu/70

A Poet's Fancies VIII

A SONG OF DERIVATIONS

COME from nothing; but from where

Come the undying thoughts I bear?

Down, through long links of death and birth,

From the past poets of the earth.

My immortality is there.

I am like the blossom of an hour.

But long, long vanished sun and shower

Awoke my breath i' the young world's air

I track the past back everywhere

Through seed and flower and seed and flower.

Or I am like a stream that flows

Full of the cold springs that arose

In morning lands, in distant hills;

And down the plain my channel fills

With melting of forgotten snows.

Voices, I have not heard, possessed

My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed

With relics of the far unknown.

And mixed with memories not my own

The sweet streams throng into my breast.

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