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West Wind in Winter

1847 –

1922

Another day awakes. And who —
Changing the world — is this?
He comes at whiles, the Winter through,
West Wind! I would not miss
His sudden tryst: the long, the new
Surprises of his kiss.

Vigilant, I make haste to close
With him who comes my way.
I go to meet him as he goes;
I know his note, his lay,
His colour and his morning rose;
And I confess his day.

My window waits; at dawn I hark
His call; at morn I meet
His haste around the tossing park
And down the softened street;
The gentler light is his; the dark,
The grey — he turns it sweet.

So too, so too, do I confess
My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess
With his immortal things.
I feel, I know him. On I press —
He finds me ’twixt his wings.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell was born on October 11, 1847, in Barnes, west London, to Thomas Thompson, a lover of literature and friend of Charles Dickens, and Christiana Weller, a noted painter and concert pianist. Thompson insisted on a classical education for his children, who were homeschooled. This education, as well as the verses of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, inspired Meynell to try writing poetry as a teen.

Occasion

Themes

About this Poem

“West Wind in Winter” appears in Later Poems (John Lane, 1902). In Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women’s Poetry (University of Missouri Press, 2019), author Patricia Murphy observed, “Meynell’s admiration of [Alfred, Lord] Tennyson’s style does not mean that her poetry lacks a descriptive quality, however, for frequent adjectival turns in her voice bring forth noteworthy effects. Generally, though, the adjectival verbiage seems stripped to an almost skeletal form. Meynell’s customary technique presents sparsely phrased depictions with merely a sprinkling of adjectival descriptors that seem rather quotidian and restrained. The 1902 ‘West Wind in Winter,’ for instance, remarks on a ‘sudden tryst,’ a ‘gentler light,’ a ‘tossing park,’ and a ‘softened street’ with no more elaborative modifiers included. The poetry frequently conveys a mental impression through an almost prose-like format of straightforward, unembellished lines that read like narrative statements. ‘West Wind in Winter,’ for example, includes such comments, phrased in typical sentential form and ending with a full stop. Nouns and pronouns rather than adjectives tend to carry a poem’s weight, as in the opening lines: ‘Another day awakes […].’”

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More by this poet

To a Daisy

Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide,
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide

Alice Meynell

1875

The Roaring Frost

A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
      With a resounding call:—

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—
Between what warming seas and conquering skies—
      And fold, and fall?

Alice Meynell

1902

Renouncement

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
   The thought of thee—and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
   This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
   When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Alice Meynell

1895

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West Wind in Winter

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