Explore "Poems: IN EARLY SPRING" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise / In the young children's eyes. / But I have learnt the years, and know the yet / Leaf-folded violet. / Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell / The cuckoo's fitful bell. / I wander in a grey time that encloses / June and the wild hedge-roses. / A year's procession of the flowers doth pass / My feet, along the grass. / And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know / The notes that stir you so, / Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear / Beginnings of the year. / In these young days you meditate your part; / I have it all by heart.
I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers / Hidden and warm with showers, / And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall / Alter his interval. / But not a flower or song I ponder is / My own, but memory's. / I shall be silent in those days desired / Before a world inspired. / O dear brown birds, compose your old song-phrases / Earth, thy familiar daisies.