A Song of Derivations by Alice Meynell — Read

I 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.

Before this life began to be, / The happy songs that wake in me / Woke long ago and far apart.

Heavily on this little heart / Presses this immortality.