A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
1847 to 1922
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. You can also print out the jumbled poem to cut up and reassemble in the classroom. Either way, take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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Lodged in the hills, what palace state
Gardens and childhood all the way.
An ancient infelicity.
What call they at my window-bars?
Darkling, deliberate, what sings
A voice peals in this end of night
Ancestral childhood long renewed;
Delight, and freshness centuries old?
And midnights of invisible rain;
Some morrow and some yesterday.
And first first-loves, a multitude,
This hope, this sanctity of fear?
How do these starry notes proclaim
The exaltation of their pain;
O innocent throat! O human ear!
What wilder things than song, what things
What Middle Ages passionate,
Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells,
All-natural things! But more—Whence came
Without desire, without dismay,
Single and spiritual notes of light.
A phrase of notes resembling stars,
And gardens, gardens, night and day,
This wonderful one, alone, at peace?
Dearer than Italy, untold
Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece,
A graver still divinity?
The South, the past, the day to be,
O passionless voice! What distant bells
This yet remoter mystery?