Explore "To O-, of Her Dark Eyes" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Across what calm of tropic seas, / 'Neath alien clusters of the nights, / Looked, in the past, such eyes as these? / Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!
The generations fostered them; / And steadfast Nature, secretwise- / Thou seedling child of that old stem- / Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.
Was it a century or two / This lovely darkness rose and set, / Occluded by grey eyes and blue, / And Nature feigning to forget?
Some grandam gave a hint of it- / So cherished was it in thy race, / So fine a treasure to transmit / In its perfection to thy face.
Some father to some mother's breast / Entrusted it, unknowing. Time / Implied, or made it manifest, / Bequest of a forgotten clime.
Hereditary eyes! But this / Is single, singular, apart:- / New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss, / New-made thy errand to my heart.