Before this life began to be
The happy songs that wake in me
Woke long ago, and far apart.
Heavily on this little heart
Presses this immortality.

This poem, however, is not so consistent as the others with the Platonic
theory of reminiscence. It is a previous existence in this world, rather
than in ideal realms, which Alice Meynell assumes for her inspirations.
She continues,

I come from nothing, but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth,
My immortality is there.

Certain singers who seem not to have been affected by the philosophical
argument for reminiscence have concurred in Alice Meynell's last
statement, and have felt that the mysterious power which is impressing
itself in their verse is the genius of dead poets, mysteriously finding
expression in their disciple's song. A characteristic example of this
attitude is Alfred Noyes' account of Chapman's sensations, when he
attempted to complete Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_. Chapman tells
his brother poets:

I have thought, sometimes, when I have tried
To work his will, the hand that moved my pen
Was mine and yet--not mine. The bodily mask
Is mine, and sometimes dull as clay it sleeps