A Comparison in a Seaside Field
'Tis royal and authentic June
Over this poor soil blossoming;
Here lies, beneath an upright noon,
Thin nation for so wild a king.
Far off, the noble Summer rules,
Violent in the ardent rose,
His sun alight in mirroring pools,
Braggart on Alps of vanquished snows;
Away, aloft, true to his hour,
Announced, his colour, his fire, his jest.
But here, in negligible flower,
Summer is not proclaimed:—confessed.
A woman I marked; for her no state,
Small joy, no song. She had her boon,
Her only youth, true to its date,
Faintly perceptible, her June.
Alice Meynell’s other poems:
