Explore "Poems: SONNET -- THE NEOPHYTE" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Who knows what days I answer for to-day: / Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow / This yet unfaded and a faded brow; / Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way, / Give one repose to pain I know not now, / One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how. / I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.
Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat. / I fold to-day at altars far apart / Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat / I seal my love to-be, my folded art. / I light the tapers at my head and feet, / And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.