The Poems of Alice Meynell

About this book

The Poems of Alice Meynell is a complete poetic record, gathering work from the early poems and Preludes through Later Poems and Last Poems. It moves among lyrics, sonnets, rondeaux, meditations, and poems addressed to beloved figures, artists, writers, saints, and the natural world. Spring, autumn, birds, rain, flowers, music, silence, parting, memory, prayer, motherhood, war, and mortality recur across its broad contents. The poems step into intimate emotional territory while also reaching toward religious mystery and the larger questions of time, creation, suffering, and artistic purpose.

Meynell’s voice is concentrated, contemplative, and richly musical. Her verse finds philosophical weight in small perceptions, the pause between sounds, a changing season, a flower, a child’s eyes, while balancing tenderness with wit and formal control. The collection reflects the late Victorian and early twentieth-century periods in its devotional language, literary allusions, sonnet craft, and responses to modern events. It will appeal to readers drawn to thoughtful lyric poetry, spiritual questioning, subtle love poems, and nature writing shaped by precise imagery rather than narrative momentum.