Explore "Free Will" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dear are some hidden things
My soul has sealed in silence; past delights;
Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
Remembered in the nights.
But my best treasures are
Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
No reliquaries hold.
There lie my trespasses, / Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuse / Determinism, nor, as the Master* says, / Charge even "the poor Deuce."
Under my hand they lie, / My very own, my proved iniquities; / And though the glory of my life go by / I hold and garner these.
How else, how otherwhere, / How otherwise, shall I discern and grope / For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare, / How weep, how hope?
*George Meredith