Free Will
Dear are some hidden things
My soul has sealed in silence; past delights;
Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
Remembered in the nights.
But my best treasures are
Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
No reliquaries hold.
There lie my trespasses,
Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuse
Determinism, nor, as the Master* says,
Charge even "the poor Deuce."
Under my hand they lie,
My very own, my proved iniquities;
And though the glory of my life go by
I hold and garner these.
How else, how otherwhere,
How otherwise, shall I discern and grope
For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare,
How weep, how hope?
*George Meredith
Alice Meynell’s other poems:
