Alice Meynell

Winter Trees on the Horizon

O delicate! Even in wooded lands
    They show the margin of my world,
My own horizon; little bands
    Of twigs unveil that edge impearled.

And what is more mine own than this,
    My limit, level with mine eyes?
For me precisely do they kiss—
    The rounded earth, the rounding skies.

It has my stature, that keen line
    (Let mathematics vouch for it).
The lark's horizon is not mine,
    No, nor his nestlings' where they sit;

No, nor the child's. And, when I gain
    The hills, I lift it as I rise
Erect; anon, back to the plain
    I soothe it with mine equal eyes.