Poem by Alice Meynell

Free Will

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

1. Beyond Knowledge
2. To Any Poet
3. The Two Poets
4. A Poet's Wife
5. A Thrush before Dawn

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