A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
1847 to 1922
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A voice peals in this end of night
phrase of notes resembling stars,
Single and spiritual notes light.
What call they at my window-bars?
South, the past, the day to be,
An infelicity.
Darkling, deliberate, what sings
This wonderful one, alone, at peace?
What wilder things than song, what things
Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece,
Dearer than Italy, untold
Delight, and freshness centuries old?
And first first-loves, a multitude,
The exaltation of their pain;
Ancestral long renewed;
And midnights of invisible rain;
gardens, gardens, night and day,
Gardens and childhood the way.
What Middle Ages passionate,
O passionless voice! What distant bells
Lodged in the hills, what palace
Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells,
Without desire, without dismay,
Some morrow and some yesterday.
All-natural things! But more—Whence came
This yet remoter mystery?
How these starry notes proclaim
A graver still divinity?
This hope, this sanctity of fear?
O innocent throat! O human ear!