TO ALICE MEYNELL, a poem

Mr. and Mrs. Coates were friends of Wilfrid and Alice Meynell. In a letter to Katherine Brégy (24 September 1912), Mrs. Coates writes: 

Indeed we were received by [the Meynell's] with the most beautiful hospitality—a hospitality such as one rarely looks to find outside of America—and we look back to our visits to them,— I hope we did not tax them by too full an acceptance of their gracious welcome,—as amongst the most charming of our English experiences.

We so liked them all! Afterward, I put into verse something of my feeling for dear Mrs. Meynell which will be included, in a somewhat revised shape, in my new volume. Naturally we talked much of you, and Mrs. Meynell said she should write you of our visit.

I MARVEL not that they have loved you so—
     The gifted ones who knew you;
Gazing upon your face, I know
     Why poet and why painter drew you;
Perceive the mystic thing divine
That brought their hearts to worship at your shrine!

How much the eyes are windows to the soul
     Your poet eyes have taught me,—
Those shadowed orbs that seem the goal
     Of all that fairest dreams have brought me,—
And, in their depths revealing you,
Win from my heart a tender homage, too.

"To Alice Meynell" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Unconquered Air (1912).