Chapter 582

{8} Terence did not please the rough old conservative Romans; they liked Plautus better, and the recurring mention of the vetus poeta in his prologues, who plagued him with the crusty critical view of his productions, has in the end a comic effect on the reader.

{9} The exclamation of Lady Booby, when Joseph defends himself: 'YOUR VIRTUE! I shall never survive it!' etc., is another instance.--Joseph Andrews. Also that of Miss Mathews in her narrative to Booth: 'But such are the friendships of women.'--Amelia.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE PG SHORT WORKS OF MEREDITH:

A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side A very doubtful benefit A great oration may be a sedative A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality All are friends who sit at table All flattery is at somebody's expense Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning As becomes them, they do not look ahead As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself Be what you seem, my little one Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence But I leave it to you Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted Causes him to be popularly weighed Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war Eccentric behaviour in trifles Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon Fourth of the Georges Generally he noticed nothing Gentleman in a good state of preservation Good jokes are not always good policy Gratitude never was a woman's gift Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance Here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody Holy images, and other miraculous objects are sold I who respect the state of marriage by refusing I make a point of never recommending my own house I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe I am a discordant instrument I do not readily vibrate If I do not speak of payment Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies? Intellectual contempt of easy dupes Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for? It was harder to be near and not close It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men Lend him your own generosity Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen Men overweeningly in love with their creations Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike Nature is not of necessity always roaring Naughtily Australian and kangarooly Never reckon on womankind for a wise act No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied Pitiful conceit in men Primitive appetite for noise Rapture of obliviousness Rejoicing they have in their common agreement Respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor Self-incense Self-worship, which is often self-distrust She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time She began to feel that this was life in earnest She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas Sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes So are great deeds judged when the danger's past (as easy) Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth Spare me that word "female" as long as you live Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction Sunning itself in the glass of Envy Suspects all young men and most young women Suspicion was her best witness Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples The intricate, which she takes for the infinite The social world he looked at did not show him heroes The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity The mildness of assured dictatorship Their idol pitched before them on the floor They miss their pleasure in pursuing it This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience Utterance of generous and patriotic cries is not sufficient We grew accustomed to periods of Irish fever We like well whatso we have done good work for We trust them or we crush them Weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one Were I chained, For liberty I would sell liberty When we see our veterans tottering to their fall When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man Your devotion craves an enormous exchange

THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH

Contents: A Reading of Life, and Other Poems Poems, Volume 1. Poems, Volume 2. Poems, Volume 3.

A Reading Of life

[This Project Gutenberg Etext was orignally prepared from a 1901 edition by David Price]

Contents:

A Reading of Life - The Vital Choice A Reading of Life - With The Huntress A Reading of Life - With The Persuader A Reading of Life - The Test Of Manhood The Cageing Of Ares The Night-Walk The Hueless Love Song In The Songless Union In Disseverance The Burden Of Strength The Main Regret Alternation Hawarden At The Close Forest History A Garden Idyl Foresight And Patience The Invective Of Achilles The Invective of Achilles - V. 225. Marshalling Of The Achaians Agamemnon In The Fight Paris And Diomedes Hypnos On Ida Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans The Horses Of Achilles The Mares Of The Camargue

Poem: A Reading of Life - The vital choice

I.

Or shall we run with Artemis Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? Both are mighty; Both give bliss; Each can torture if divided; Each claims worship undivided, In her wake would have us wallow.

II.

Youth must offer on bent knees Homage unto one or other; Earth, the mother, This decrees; And unto the pallid Scyther Either points us shun we either Shun or too devoutly follow.

Poem: A Reading of Life - With The Huntress

Through the water-eye of night, Midway between eve and dawn, See the chase, the rout, the flight In deep forest; oread, faun, Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; Ravenous all the line for speed. See yon wavy sparkle beck Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead. Down her course a serpent star Coils and shatters at her heels; Peals the horn exulting, peals Plaintive, is it near or far. Huntress, arrowy to pursue, In and out of woody glen, Under cliffs that tear the blue, Over torrent, over fen, She and forest, where she skims Feathery, darken and relume: Those are her white-lightning limbs Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. Mountains hear her and call back, Shrewd with night: a frosty wail Distant: her the emerald vale Folds, and wonders in her track. Now her retinue is lean, Many rearward; streams the chase Eager forth of covert; seen One hot tide the rapturous race. Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, Up on a flash the lighted mound Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft Strung to barb with archer's craft, Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet Songs to see, past pitch of sweet. Fearful swiftness they outrun, Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, Challenge, charge of tusks elude: Theirs the dance to tame the rude; Beast, and beast in manhood tame, Follow we their silver flame. Pride of flesh from bondage free, Reaping vigour of its waste, Marks her servitors, and she Sanctifies the unembraced. Nought of perilous she reeks; Valour clothes her open breast; Sweet beyond the thrill of sex; Hallowed by the sex confessed. Huntress arrowy to pursue, Colder she than sunless dew, She, that breath of upper air; Ay, but never lyrist sang, Draught of Bacchus never sprang Blood the bliss of Gods to share, High o'er sweep of eagle wings, Like the run with her, when rings Clear her rally, and her dart, In the forest's cavern heart, Tells of her victorious aim. Then is pause and chatter, cheer, Laughter at some satyr lame, Looks upon the fallen deer, Measuring his noble crest; Here a favourite in her train, Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; All applauded. Shall she reign Worshipped? O to be with her there! She, that breath of nimble air, Lifts the breast to giant power. Maid and man, and man and maid, Who each other would devour Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, There are comrades, led by her, Maid-preserver, man-maker.

Poem: A Reading of Life - With The Persuader

Who murmurs, hither, hither: who Where nought is audible so fills the ear? Where nought is visible can make appear A veil with eyes that waver through, Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come, Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire To clasp and strike a slackened lyre, Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, Flame in a crystal vessel sails Beneath a dome of jewelled spray, For land that drops the rosy day On nights of throbbing nightingales.

Landward did the wonder flit, Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. We saw the heavens fling down their rose; On rapturous waves we saw her glide; The pearly sea-shell half enclose; The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more Behold than tracks along a startled shore, With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, The very she called forth by ripened blood For its next breath of being, murmurs; she, Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, The stream within us urged to flood; Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, Maid, woman and divinity; Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit Untasted; she our written fate Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root: Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; The evanescent, ever-present she, Great Nature's stern necessity In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.

The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, Her form is given to pardoned sight, And lets our mortal eyes receive The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; Adored by them who solitarily pace, In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, The paths among the meadow asphodel, Remembering. Never there her face Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell Around such whiteness the enamoured air Of noon that clothes her, never there. Daughter of light, the joyful light, She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, Sweet in her disregard of aid Divine to conquer or persuade. A fountain jets from moss; a flower Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower. By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.

Shorn of attendant Graces she can use Her natural snares to make her will supreme. A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: One arm at curve along a rounded thigh; Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. The bud of fresh virginity awaits The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: She touches on the hour of happy mates; Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

And while commanding blissful sight believe It holds her as a body strained to breast, Down on the underworld's perpetual eve She plunges the possessor dispossessed; And bids believe that image, heaving warm, Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame; The phantom any breeze blows out of form; A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.

The rapture shed the torture weaves; The direst blow on human heart she deals: The pain to know the seen deceives; Nought true but what insufferably feels. And stabs of her delicious note, That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; In her delicious laughter part revealed; Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: Yon folded couples, passing under shade, Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. We dolorous complainers had a dream, Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, We saw stand bare of her celestial beam The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips She nods: at once that creature wears her lure. Blush of our being between birth and death: Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: Her wily semblance nought of her denies; Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. But scorn she has for them that walk alone; Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. The men as chief of criminals she disdains, And holds the reason in perceptive thought. More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought. Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths: Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew. Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn Across her garden from the insaner crew, She darkens to malignity of scorn. A shiver courses through her garden-grounds: Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. These, the irreverent of Life's design, Division between natural and divine Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest; And these because the roses flood their cheeks, Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. With them is war; and well the Goddess knows What undermines the race who mount the rose; How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. They who her sway withstand a sea defy, At every point of juncture must be proof; Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. She, tenderness, is pitiless to them Resisting in her godhead nature's truth. No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. These miserably disinclined, The lamentably unembraced, Insult the Pleasures Earth designed To people and beflower the waste. Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: For death they live, in life they die.

Her head the Goddess from them turns, As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. She views her quivering couples unconsoled, And of her beauty mirror they become, Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, They play the music made of two: Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end: Cunninger than the numbered strings, For melodies, for harmonies, For mastered discords, and the things Not vocable, whose mysteries Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

Is it an anguish overflowing shame And the tongue's pudency confides to her, With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, Then is the Goddess tenderness Maternal, and she has a sister's tones Benign to soothe intemperate distress, Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease To those of her milk-bearer votaries As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source Direct; erratic but in heart's excess; Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force; Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. And pray they under skies less overcast, That swiftly may her star of eve descend, Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

Unfailing her reply to woman's voice In supplication instant. Is it man's, She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, And him: the flowers are various, he has choice. Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps To her invoked: distraction is implored. A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored. His tales of her declare she condescends; Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose. She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings. 'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse Rarely the music made of two ascends, And Beauty's Queen some other way is won. Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends Herself to all, and yields herself to none, Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised In hot assurance under shade of doubt: And numerous are the images bepraised As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.

Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. That is her garden's precept, seen where shines Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines. Daughter of light, the joyful light, She bids her couples face full East, Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, The lion-haunted thickets hold apart. In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; High confidence in her whose aid is lent To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone. And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.

Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show. For him requiring woman's arts to please Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, No race of giants! In the woman's veins Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains. Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, Aspiring blends the Titan with the God; Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss; And is it needed that Love's daintier brute Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. She is great Nature's ever intimate In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, Until perverted by her senseless male, She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.

Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, And greatest and most present, with her dower Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute For meditated guile. She laughs to hear A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, Her garden's histories tell of to all near. Let it be said, But less upon her guile Doth she rely for her immortal smile. Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens To push her conquests by the simplest means. While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.