TO ALICE MEYNELL

I too have known my mutinies,

Played with improvident desires,

Gone indolently vain as these

Whose lips from undistinguished choirs

Mock at the music of our sires.

I too have erred in thought. In hours

When needy life forbade me bring

To song the brain’ s unravished powers,

Then had it been a temperate thing

Loosely to pluck an easy string.

Yet thought has been, poor profligate,

Sin’ s period. Through dear and long

Obedience I learn to hate

Unhappy lethargies that wrong

The larger loyalties of song.

And you upon your slender reed,

Most exquisitely tuned, have made

For every singing heart a creed.

And I have heard; and I have played

My lonely music unafraid,

Knowing that still a friendly few,

Turning aside from turbulence,

Cherish the difficult phrase, the due

Bridals of disembodied sense

With the new word’ s magnificence.