Alice Meynell

The Poet and His Book

Here are my thoughts, alive within this fold,
    My simple sheep. Their shepherd, I grow wise
As dearly, gravely, deeply I behold
                Their different eyes.

O distant pastures in their blood! O streams
    From watersheds that fed them for this prison!
Lights from aloft, midsummer suns in dreams,
                Set and arisen.

They wander out, but all return anew,
    The small ones, to this heart to which they clung;
"And those that are with young," the fruitful few
                That are with young.