Flower of the Mind by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell
page 25 of 45 (55%)
page 25 of 45 (55%)
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opportunity." If these charming passages lurk in his worst poems,
the reader of this anthology will not be able to count them in his best. In the Epiphany Hymn the heavens have found means 'To disinherit the sun's rise, Delicately to displace The day, and plant it fairer in thy face." To the Morning: Satisfaction for Sleep, is, all through, luminous. It would be difficult to find, even in the orient poetry of that time, more daylight or more spirit. True, an Elizabethan would not have had poetry so rich as in Love's Horoscope, but yet an Elizabethan would have had it no fresher. The Hymn to St. Teresa has the brevities which this poet--reproached with his longueurs-- masters so well. He tells how the Spanish girl, six years old, set out in search of death: "She's for the Moors and Martyrdom. Sweet, not so fast!" Of many contemporary songs in pursuit of a fugitive Cupid, Crashaw's Cupid's Cryer: out of the Greek, is the most dainty. But if readers should be a little vexed with the poet's light heart and perpetual pleasure, with the late ripeness of his sweetness, here, for their satisfaction, is a passage capable of the great age that had lately closed when Crashaw wrote. It is in his summons to nature and art: "Come, and come strong, To the conspiracy of our spacious song!" I have been obliged to take courage to alter the reading of the seventeenth and nineteenth lines of the Prayer-Book, so as to make them intelligible; they had been obviously misprinted. I have also |
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