Chapter 1
Transcribed from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” edition by David Price, email [email protected]
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: The Châlet, Box Hill]
POEMS VOL. II
BY GEORGE MEREDITH
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SURREY EDITION
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LONDON THE TIMES BOOK CLUB 376–384 OXFORD STREET, W. 1912
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Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to his Majesty
CONTENTS
PAGE TO J. M., 1
Let Fate or Insufficiency provide LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA, 2
Now farewell to you! you are TIME AND SENTIMENT, 11
I see a fair young couple in a wood, LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT, 12
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose THE STAR SIRIUS, 12
Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales SENSE AND SPIRIT, 13
The senses loving Earth or well or ill EARTH’S SECRET, 13
Not solitarily in fields we find INTERNAL HARMONY, 14
Assured of worthiness we do not dread GRACE AND LOVE, 14
Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she APPRECIATION, 15
Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM, 15
Rich labour is the struggle to be wise THE STATE OF AGE, 16
Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg PROGRESS, 16
In Progress you have little faith, say you: THE WORLD’S ADVANCE, 17
Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline A CERTAIN PEOPLE, 17
As Puritans they prominently wax, THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS, 18
That Garden of sedate Philosophy A LATER ALEXANDRIAN, 18
An inspiration caught from dubious hues AN ORSON OF THE MUSE, 19
Her son, albeit the Muse’s livery THE POINT OF TASTE, 19
Unhappy poets of a sunken prime! CAMELUS SALTAT, 20
What say you, critic, now you have become CONTINUED, 20
Oracle of the market! thence you drew MY THEME, 21
Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt: CONTINUED, 21
’Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts ON THE DANGER OF WAR, 22
Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, TO CARDINAL MANNING, 23
I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men, TO COLONEL CHARLES, 24
An English heart, my commandant, TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS, 27
Strike not thy dog with a stick! Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN, 33
Enter these enchanted woods, A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN, 48
Last night returning from my twilight walk THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES, 49
He who has looked upon Earth THE LARK ASCENDING, 67
He rises and begins to round, PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS, 71
When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, MELAMPUS, 75
With love exceeding a simple love of the things LOVE IN THE VALLEY, 80
Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD, 88
Carols nature, counsel men, THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH, 90
I chanced upon an early walk to spy EARTH AND MAN, 92
On her great venture, Man, A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT, 100
See the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath Ballads and poems of Tragic Life THE TWO MASKS, 115
Melpomene among her livid people, ARCHDUCHESS ANNE, 116 I. In middle age an evil thing II. Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost III. Old Kraken read a missive penned THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA, 133
Queen Theodolind has built A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD, 139
Ladies who in chains of wedlock THE YOUNG PRINCESS, 144 I. When the South sang like a nightingale II. The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick, III. Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire; IV. The soft night-wind went laden to death KING HARALD’S TRANCE, 154
Sword in length a reaping-hook amain WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY, 158
Hawk or shrike has done this deed YOUNG REYNARD, 159
Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub MANFRED, 160
Projected from the bilious Childe, HERNANI, 161
Cistercians might crack their sides THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA, 162
Flat as to an eagle’s eye, ANEURIN’S HARP, 180
Prince of Bards was old Aneurin; MEN AND MAN, 186
Men the Angels eyed; THE LAST CONTENTION, 187
Young captain of a crazy bark! PERIANDER, 190
How died Melissa none dares shape in words. SOLON, 195
The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye BELLEROPHON, 197
Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod PHAÉTHÔN, 200
At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer, A Reading of Earth SEED-TIME, 209
Flowers of the willow-herb are wool; HARD WEATHER, 211
Bursts from a rending East in flaws THE SOUTH-WESTER, 215
Day of the cloud in fleets! O day THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY, 220
I know him, February’s thrush, THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER, 226
Demeter devastated our good land, EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN, 231
The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, MOTHER TO BABE, 234
Fleck of sky you are, WOODLAND PEACE, 235
Sweet as Eden is the air, THE QUESTION WHITHER, 236
When we have thrown off this old suit, OUTER AND INNER, 237
From twig to twig the spider weaves NATURE AND LIFE, 239
Leave the uproar: at a leap DIRGE IN WOODS, 240
A wind sways the pines, A FAITH ON TRIAL, 241
On the morning of May, CHANGE IN RECURRENCE, 260
I stood at the gate of the cot HYMN TO COLOUR, 261
With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, MEDITATION UNDER STARS, 265
What links are ours with orbs that are WOODMAN AND ECHO, 268
Close Echo hears the woodman’s axe, THE WISDOM OF ELD, 270
We spend our lives in learning pilotage, EARTH’S PREFERENCE, 270
Earth loves her young: a preference manifest: SOCIETY, 271
Historic be the survey of our kind, WINTER HEAVENS, 271
Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive NOTES 272
TO J. M.
LET Fate or Insufficiency provide Mean ends for men who what they are would be: Penned in their narrow day no change they see Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide: And whether Earth’s great offspring, by decree, Must rot if they abjure rapacity, Not argument but effort shall decide. They number many heads in that hard flock: Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel. Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, And bring the army of the faithful through.
LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA
I
NOW farewell to you! you are One of my dearest, whom I trust: Now follow you the Western star, And cast the old world off as dust.
II
From many friends adieu! adieu! The quick heart of the word therein. Much that we hope for hangs with you: We lose you, but we lose to win.
III
The beggar-king, November, frets: His tatters rich with Indian dyes Goes hugging: we our season’s debts Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise.
IV
We send our worthiest; can no less, If we would now be read aright,— To that great people who may bless Or curse mankind: they have the might.
V
The proudest seasons find their graves, And we, who would not be wooed, must court. We have let the blunderers and the waves Divide us, and the devil had sport.
VI
The blunderers and the waves no more Shall sever kindred sending forth Their worthiest from shore to shore For welcome, bent to prove their worth.
VII
Go you and such as you afloat, Our lost kinsfellowship to revive. The battle of the antidote Is tough, though silent: may you thrive!
VIII
I, when in this North wind I see The straining red woods blown awry, Feel shuddering like the winter tree, All vein and artery on cold sky.
IX
The leaf that clothed me is torn away; My friend is as a flying seed. Ay, true; to bring replenished day Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed.
X
What husky habitations seem These comfortable sayings! they fell, In some rich year become a dream:— So cries my heart, the infidel! . . .
XI
Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest, Arabian visions could not vie With those broad wonders of the West, And would I bid you stay? Not I!
XII
The strange experimental land Where men continually dare take Niagara leaps;—unshattered stand ’Twixt fall and fall;—for conscience’ sake,
XIII
Drive onward like a flood’s increase;— Fresh rapids and abysms engage;— (We live—we die) scorn fireside peace, And, as a garment, put on rage,
XIV
Rather than bear God’s reprimand, By rearing on a full fat soil Concrete of sin and sloth;—this land, You will observe it coil in coil.
XV
The land has been discover’d long, The people we have yet to know; Themselves they know not, save that strong For good and evil still they grow.
XVI
Nor know they us. Yea, well enough In that inveterate machine Through which we speak the printed stuff Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien
XVII
Tremendous:—as a lion’s show The grand menagerie paintings hide: Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow! The poor old Lion lies inside! . . .
XVIII
It is not England that they hear, But mighty Mammon’s pipers, trained To trumpet out his moods, and stir His sluggish soul: _her_ voice is chained:
XIX
Almost her spirit seems moribund! O teach them, ’tis not she displays The panic of a purse rotund, Eternal dread of evil days,—
XX
That haunting spectre of success Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths: Not England answers nobleness,— ‘Live for thyself: thou art not earth’s.’
XXI
Not she, when struggling manhood tries For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate, Points out the planet, Compromise, And shakes a mild reproving pate:
XXII
Says never: ‘I am well at ease, My sneers upon the weak I shed: The strong have my cajoleries: And those beneath my feet I tread.’
XXIII
Nay, but ’tis said for her, great Lord! The misery’s there! The shameless one Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword, Herself not yielding what it won:—
XXIV
Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach, On sweet Prosperity—or greed. ‘Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each, God’s blessings let us take, and feed!’
XXV
Ungrateful creatures crave a part— She tells them firmly she is full; Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart With bleating, stops her ears with wool:—
XXVI
Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms (Nightmares of bankruptcy and death),— Showers down in lumps a load of alms, Then pants as one who has lost a breath;
XXVII
Believes high heaven, whence favours flow, Too kind to ask a sacrifice For what it specially doth bestow;— Gives _she_, ’tis generous, cheese to mice.
XXVIII
She saw the young Dominion strip For battle with a grievous wrong, And curled a noble Norman lip, And looked with half an eye sidelong;
XXIX
And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers, Denounced the waste of blood and coin, Implored the combatants, with tears, Never to think they could rejoin.
XXX
Oh! was it England that, alas! Turned sharp the victor to cajole? Behold her features in the glass: A monstrous semblance mocks her soul!
XXXI
A false majority, by stealth, Have got her fast, and sway the rod: A headless tyrant built of wealth, The hypocrite, the belly-God.
XXXII
To him the daily hymns they raise: His tastes are sought: his will is done: He sniffs the putrid steam of praise, Place for true England here is none!
XXXIII
But can a distant race discern The difference ’twixt her and him? My friend, that will you bid them learn. He shames and binds her, head and limb.
XXXIV
Old wood has blossoms of this sort. Though sound at core, she is old wood. If freemen hate her, one retort She has; but one!—‘You are my blood.’
XXXV
A poet, half a prophet, rose In recent days, and called for power. I love him; but his mountain prose— His Alp and valley and wild flower—
XXXVI
Proclaimed our weakness, not its source. What medicine for disease had he? Whom summoned for a show of force? Our titular aristocracy!
XXXVII
Why, these are great at City feasts; From City riches mainly rise: ’Tis well to hear them, when the beasts That die for us they eulogize!
XXXVIII
But these, of all the liveried crew Obeisant in Mammon’s walk, Most deferent ply the facial screw, The spinal bend, submissive talk.
XXXIX
Small fear that they will run to books (At least the better form of seed)! I, too, have hoped from their good looks, And fables of their Northman breed;—
XL
Have hoped that they the land would head In acts magnanimous; but, lo, When fainting heroes beg for bread They frown: where they are driven they go.
XLI
Good health, my friend! and may your lot Be cheerful o’er the Western rounds. This butter-woman’s market-trot Of verse is passing market-bounds.
XLII
Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone. On banks of fog faint lines extend: Adieu! bring back a braver dawn To England, and to me my friend.
_November_ 15_th_, 1867.
TIME AND SENTIMENT
I SEE a fair young couple in a wood, And as they go, one bends to take a flower, That so may be embalmed their happy hour, And in another day, a kindred mood, Haply together, or in solitude, Recovered what the teeth of Time devour, The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power, Wherewith by their young blood they are endued To move all enviable, framed in May, And of an aspect sisterly with Truth: Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed: Who will be prompted on some pallid day To lift the hueless flower and show that dead, Even such, and by this token, is their youth.
LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT
ON a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law.
THE STAR SIRIUS
BRIGHT Sirius! that when Orion pales To dotlings under moonlight still art keen With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales: Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails, Reducing many lustrous to the lean: Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen To show what source divine is, and prevails. Long watches through, at one with godly night, I mark thee planting joy in constant fire; And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire Life to the spirit, passion for the light, Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.
SENSE AND SPIRIT
THE senses loving Earth or well or ill Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. The mind is in their trammels, and lights not By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will To find in nature things which less may chill An ardour that desires, unknowing what. Till we conceive her living we go distraught, At best but circle-windsails of a mill. Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life Creatively has given us blood and breath For endless war and never wound unhealed, The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife To read her own and trust her down to death.
EARTH’S SECRET
NOT solitarily in fields we find Earth’s secret open, though one page is there; Her plainest, such as children spell, and share With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, In turbid cities, can the key be bare. It hangs for those who hither thither fare, Close interthreading nature with our kind. They, hearing History speak, of what men were, And have become, are wise. The gain is great In vision and solidity; it lives. Yet at a thought of life apart from her, Solidity and vision lose their state, For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.
INTERNAL HARMONY
ASSURED of worthiness we do not dread Competitors; we rather give them hail And greeting in the lists where we may fail: Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head! My betters are my masters: purely fed By their sustainment I likewise shall scale Some rocky steps between the mount and vale; Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed. So that I draw the breath of finer air, Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn, Nor rivals tightly belted for the race. Good speed to them! My place is here or there; My pride is that among them I have place: And thus I keep this instrument in tune.
GRACE AND LOVE
TWO flower-enfolding crystal vases she I love fills daily, mindful but of one: And close behind pale morn she, like the sun Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see, Clear water in the cup, and into me The image of herself: and that being done, Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run In climbers or in creepers or the tree She ranges with unerring fingers fine, To harmony so vivid that through sight I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold Beyond the senses, where such love as mine, Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold Their starry more from her and me, unite.
APPRECIATION
EARTH was not Earth before her sons appeared, Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born: And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; To none by her fresh wingedness endeared; Unwelcome unto revellers outworn. I the last echoes of Diana’s horn In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered. No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul! And more than simple duty moved thy feet. New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame, From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll May men read on the heart I taught to beat: That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim.
THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM
RICH labour is the struggle to be wise, While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. Else better were it in some bower of peace Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. So following her, your hewing may attain The right to speak unto the mute, and shun That sly temptation of the illumined brain, Deliveries oracular, self-spun. Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.
THE STATE OF AGE
RUB thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg Honours from aught about thee. Light the young. Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg. Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue, Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung, Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg. Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. But hast thou in thy season set her fires To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash.
PROGRESS
IN Progress you have little faith, say you: Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, By force, and gentle women choose their mates Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: The human heart Bellona’s mad halloo Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. ‘Now at this time,’ says History, ‘those two States Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred The bloody settlement of their disputes Till God should bless them better.’ They did right. And naming Progress, both shall have the word.
THE WORLD’S ADVANCE