Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 161.jpg

Rh 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:

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,