for man, woman, and child the tender, irregular, sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. ... nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked foot.

Alice Meynell

Categorized in : Children Men Eye

Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind.

Alice Meynell

laughter happiness inspirational

There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple - leaves with an early moon.

Alice Meynell

apples nature moon

We talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of the most majestic of all secondary lights.

Alice Meynell

sunshine light clouds

Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.

Alice Meynell

strong memories travel

recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind.

Alice Meynell

mind next-week years

It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, when Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.

Alice Meynell

nature loss men

She walks--the lady of my delight-- A sheperdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep. She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep.

Alice Meynell

white sheep sleep

My day-mind can endure / Upright, in hope, all it must undergo. / But O, afraid, unsure, / My night-mind waking lies too low, too low.

Alice Meynell

mind night lying

If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds.

Alice Meynell

loneliness eye looks

A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back -- it is already so far.

Alice Meynell

infancy-is children years

The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.

Alice Meynell

color heart blood

There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a child's foot runs.

Alice Meynell

sleep running children

From the shaken tower

Alice Meynell

bells towers time

A wall is the safeguard of simplicity.

Alice Meynell

wall simplicity

But, visiting Sea, your love doth press / And reach in further than you know, / And fills all these; and, when you go, / There's loneliness in loneliness.

Alice Meynell

ocean loneliness sea

With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bell. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.

Alice Meynell

echoes musician bird

Now, in our opinion no author should be blamed for obscurity, nor should any pains be grudged in the effort to understand him, provided that he has done his best to be intelligible. Difficult thoughts are quite distinct from difficult words. Difficulty of thought is the very heart of poetry.

Alice Meynell

effort pain heart

O spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise / In the young children's eyes. / But I have learnt the years, and know the yet / Leaf-folded violet.

Alice Meynell

spring sweet children

Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, / Floats in the mist, a little cloud at tether.

Alice Meynell

rome age clouds

Solitude is separate experience.

Alice Meynell

solitude