The Lantern (Volume 1) - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915. Excerpt: ... THE LADY OF MY DELIGHT By Edward F. O'day In the small volume which contains the collected poems of Alice Meynell the place of honor is given to a masterpiece of eighteen lines. "The Shepherdess" is the supreme expression of this great English poet, the finest gem of her unflawed art, the unsurpassed example of what Francis Thompson called "her own carved perfect way." Should this poem perish, poetry would feel the impoverishment very keenly. Should all of Alice Meynell's poems except this one perish, her place in poetry could still be fixed as surely as Sappho's has been fixed by the Hymn to Aphrodite:--She walks--the lady of my delight--A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep; She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep. She roams maternal hills and bright, Dark valleys safe and deep. Into that tender breast at night The chastest stars may peep. She walks--the lady of my delight--A shepherdess of sheep. She holds her little thoughts in sight, Though gay they run and leap. She is so circumspect and right; She has her soul to keep. She walks--the lady of my delight--A shepherdess of sheep. Alice Meynell has her soul to keep, and right circumspectly does she keep it. Her white thoughts she holds in constant sight, and however gayly they run and leap, they do not gambol wantonly like the unshepherded thoughts of base poets who unfrock themselves in the sight of Heaven by blaspheming their divine ordination. Alice Meynell is the poet of sanctifying grace. She brings no mortal sin into the shrine of song. "Into that tender breast the chastest stars may peep," and angels too. She is a vestal matron in the temple of poetry, the unstained singer of an impure day; and we must cle...