Poems. Volume 2

George Meredith

Poems – Volume 2

TO J. M

Let Fate or Insufficiency provideMean ends for men who what they are would be:Penned in their narrow day no change they seeSave 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 feelThe strength of Roland in thy wrist to hewA chasm sheer into the barrier rock,And bring the army of the faithful through.

LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA

INow farewell to you! you areOne of my dearest, whom I trust:Now follow you the Western star,And cast the old world off as dust.IIFrom 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.IIIThe beggar-king, November, frets:His tatters rich with Indian dyesGoes hugging: we our season’s debtsPay calmly, of the Spring forewise.IVWe send our worthiest; can no less,If we would now be read aright,—To that great people who may blessOr curse mankind: they have the might.VThe proudest seasons find their graves,And we, who would not be wooed, must court.We have let the blunderers and the wavesDivide us, and the devil had sport.VIThe blunderers and the waves no moreShall sever kindred sending forthTheir worthiest from shore to shoreFor welcome, bent to prove their worth.VIIGo you and such as you afloat,Our lost kinsfellowship to revive.The battle of the antidoteIs tough, though silent: may you thrive!VIIII, when in this North wind I seeThe straining red woods blown awry,Feel shuddering like the winter tree,All vein and artery on cold sky.IXThe leaf that clothed me is torn away;My friend is as a flying seed.Ay, true; to bring replenished dayLight ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed.XWhat husky habitations seemThese comfortable sayings! they fell,In some rich year become a dream:—So cries my heart, the infidel! . . .XIOh! for the strenuous mind in quest,Arabian visions could not vieWith those broad wonders of the West,And would I bid you stay?  Not I!XIIThe strange experimental landWhere men continually dare takeNiagara leaps;—unshattered stand’Twixt fall and fall;—for conscience’ sake,XIIIDrive 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,XIVRather than bear God’s reprimand,By rearing on a full fat soilConcrete of sin and sloth;—this land,You will observe it coil in coil.XVThe land has been discover’d long,The people we have yet to know;Themselves they know not, save that strongFor good and evil still they grow.XVINor know they us.  Yea, well enoughIn that inveterate machineThrough which we speak the printed stuffDaily, with voice most hugeous, mienXVIITremendous:—as a lion’s showThe grand menagerie paintings hide:Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow!The poor old Lion lies inside! . . .XVIIIIt is not England that they hear,But mighty Mammon’s pipers, trainedTo trumpet out his moods, and stirHis sluggish soul: her voice is chained:XIXAlmost her spirit seems moribund!O teach them, ’tis not she displaysThe panic of a purse rotund,Eternal dread of evil days,—XXThat haunting spectre of successWhich shows a heart sunk low in the girths:Not England answers nobleness,—‘Live for thyself: thou art not earth’s.’XXINot she, when struggling manhood triesFor freedom, air, a hopefuller fate,Points out the planet, Compromise,And shakes a mild reproving pate:XXIISays 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.’XXIIINay, but ’tis said for her, great Lord!The misery’s there!  The shameless oneAdjures mankind to sheathe the sword,Herself not yielding what it won:—XXIVHer 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!’XXVUngrateful creatures crave a part—She tells them firmly she is full;Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heartWith bleating, stops her ears with wool:—XXVISeized 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;XXVIIBelieves high heaven, whence favours flow,Too kind to ask a sacrificeFor what it specially doth bestow;—Gives she, ’tis generous, cheese to mice.XXVIIIShe saw the young Dominion stripFor battle with a grievous wrong,And curled a noble Norman lip,And looked with half an eye sidelong;XXIXAnd in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,Denounced the waste of blood and coin,Implored the combatants, with tears,Never to think they could rejoin.XXXOh! was it England that, alas!Turned sharp the victor to cajole?Behold her features in the glass:A monstrous semblance mocks her soul!XXXIA false majority, by stealth,Have got her fast, and sway the rod:A headless tyrant built of wealth,The hypocrite, the belly-God.XXXIITo 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!XXXIIIBut can a distant race discernThe difference ’twixt her and him?My friend, that will you bid them learn.He shames and binds her, head and limb.XXXIVOld wood has blossoms of this sort.Though sound at core, she is old wood.If freemen hate her, one retortShe has; but one!—‘You are my blood.’XXXVA poet, half a prophet, roseIn recent days, and called for power.I love him; but his mountain prose—His Alp and valley and wild flower—XXXVIProclaimed our weakness, not its source.What medicine for disease had he?Whom summoned for a show of force?Our titular aristocracy!XXXVIIWhy, these are great at City feasts;From City riches mainly rise:’Tis well to hear them, when the beastsThat die for us they eulogize!XXXVIIIBut these, of all the liveried crewObeisant in Mammon’s walk,Most deferent ply the facial screw,The spinal bend, submissive talk.XXXIXSmall 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;—XLHave hoped that they the land would headIn acts magnanimous; but, lo,When fainting heroes beg for breadThey frown: where they are driven they go.XLIGood health, my friend! and may your lotBe cheerful o’er the Western rounds.This butter-woman’s market-trotOf verse is passing market-bounds.XLIIAdieu! the sun sets; he is gone.On banks of fog faint lines extend:Adieu! bring back a braver dawnTo England, and to me my friend. November 15th, 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 enduedTo 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 dayTo 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 fiendAbove 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 scarsWith 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 palesTo dotlings under moonlight still art keenWith cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mienWho 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 seenTo 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 inspireLife to the spirit, passion for the light,Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sightHas viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.

SENSE AND SPIRIT

The senses loving Earth or well or illRavel yet more the riddle of our lot.The mind is in their trammels, and lights notBy trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the willTo find in nature things which less may chillAn 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 lifeCreatively has given us blood and breathFor endless war and never wound unhealed,The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-fieldSolves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strifeTo read her own and trust her down to death.

EARTH’S SECRET

Not solitarily in fields we findEarth’s secret open, though one page is there;Her plainest, such as children spell, and shareWith 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 greatIn 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 dreadCompetitors; we rather give them hailAnd greeting in the lists where we may fail:Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head!My betters are my masters: purely fedBy their sustainment I likewise shall scaleSome 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 sheI love fills daily, mindful but of one:And close behind pale morn she, like the sunPriming our world with light, pours, sweet to see,Clear water in the cup, and into meThe image of herself: and that being done,Choice of what blooms round her fair garden runIn climbers or in creepers or the treeShe ranges with unerring fingers fine,To harmony so vivid that through sightI hear, I have her heavenliness to foldBeyond the senses, where such love as mine,Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withholdTheir 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 mornAt city-windows, touching eyelids bleared;To none by her fresh wingedness endeared;Unwelcome unto revellers outworn.I the last echoes of Diana’s hornIn 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 scrollMay 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 peaceSlothful 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 attainThe right to speak unto the mute, and shunThat sly temptation of the illumined brain,Deliveries oracular, self-spun.Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vainTo shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.

THE STATE OF AGE

Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor begHonours 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 firesTo 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 IDrops 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 matesMost amorously from the gilded fighting crew:The human heart Bellona’s mad hallooWill ever fire to dicing with the Fates.‘Now at this time,’ says History, ‘those two StatesStood ready their past wrestling to renew.They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutesWhose haunches quiver.  But a yellow blightFell on their waxing harvests.  They deferredThe bloody settlement of their disputesTill God should bless them better.’  They did right.And naming Progress, both shall have the word.

THE WORLD’S ADVANCE

Judge mildly the tasked world; and disinclineTo brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.You have perchance observed the inebriate’s trackAt night when he has quitted the inn-sign:He plays diversions on the homeward line,Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack:A hedge may take him, but he turns not back,Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine.‘Spiral,’ the memorable Lady termsOur mind’s ascent: our world’s advance presentsThat figure on a flat; the way of worms.Cherish the promise of its good intents,And warn it, not one instinct to effaceEre Reason ripens for the vacant place.

A CERTAIN PEOPLE

As Puritans they prominently wax,And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacksWhen Peace another door in them unlocks,Where conscience shows the eyeing of an oxGrown dully apprehensive of an Axe.Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness,Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut.They need their pious exercises lessThan schooling in the Pleasures: fair beliefThat these are devilish only to their thief,Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS

That Garden of sedate PhilosophyOnce flourished, fenced from passion and mishap,A shining spot upon a shaggy map;Where mind and body, in fair junction free,Luted their joyful concord; like the treeFrom root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature’s lapOf gentlemen the happy nursery.That Garden would on light supremest verge,Were the long drawing of an equal breathHealthful for Wisdom’s head, her heart, her aims.Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge,And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaimsThe crucifix that came of Nazareth.

A LATER ALEXANDRIAN

An inspiration caught from dubious huesFilled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased;For they lead farther than the single-faced,Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse,His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced,And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews.Men railed at such a singer; women thrilledResponsively: he sang not Nature’s ownDivinest, but his lyric had a tone,As ’twere a forest-echo of her voice:What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilledFrom what they dread, who do through tears rejoice.

AN ORSON OF THE MUSE

Her son, albeit the Muse’s liveryAnd measured courtly paces rouse his taunts,Naked and hairy in his savage haunts,To Nature only will he bend the knee;Spouting the founts of her distilleryLike rough rock-sources; and his woes and wantsBeing Nature’s, civil limitation dauntsHis utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,The Muse will hearken to with graver earThan many of her train can waken: himWould fain have taught what fruitful things and dearMust sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,If in no vessel built for sea they swim.

THE POINT OF TASTE

Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!You to reviewers are as ball to bat.They shadow you with Homer, knock you flatWith Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublimeOn you the excommunicates of Rhyme,Because you sing not in the living Fat.The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnatIs verse that shuns their self-producing time.Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs,You win their pleased attention.  But, bright GodO’ the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bumpChorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs.

CAMELUS SALTAT

What say you, critic, now you have becomeAn author and maternal?—in this trap(To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rapOn instruments as like as drum to drum.You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum,So like the nose fly-teased in its noon’s nap.You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clapWith that between the fingers and the thumb.It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch,Which bade our public gobble or reject.O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked,Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere,You dealt?—the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.

CONTINUED

Oracle of the market! thence you drewThe taste which stamped you guide of the inept.—A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept,A sturdy and a briny, once men knew.He loved small beer, and for that copious brew,To roll ingurgitation till he slept,Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept:And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew.At last this dancer to the Polar starSank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched,To drink the sea and pilot him to land.O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched,Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they areNot eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.

MY THEME

Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt:The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.But I have never stood at Fortune’s beck:Were she and her light crew to run atiltAt my poor holding little would be spilt;Small were the praise for singing o’er that wreck.Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck;He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.Nathless she strikes at random, can be fellWith other than those votaries she dealsThe black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.I say but that this love of Earth revealsA soul beside our own to quicken, quell,Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.

CONTINUED

’Tis true the wisdom that my mind exactsThrough contemplation from a heart unbentBy many tempests may be stained and rent:The summer flies it mightily attracts.Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts,Which scarce give breathing of the sty’s contentFor their diurnal carnal nourishment:Which treat with Nature in official pacts.The deader body Nature could proclaim.Much life have neither.  Let the heavens of wrathRattle, then both scud scattering to froth.But during calms the flies of idle aimLess put the spirit out, less baffle thirstFor light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.

ON THE DANGER OF WAR

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.When nations gain the pitch where rhetoricSeems reason they are ripe for cannon’s food.Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,But with the doubt ’tis our old devil’s trick.O now the down-slope of the lunaticIllumine lest we redden of that brood.For not since man in his first view of theeAscended to the heavens giving signWithin him of deep sky and sounded sea,Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;In peril of his blood his ears inclineTo drums whose loudness is their emptiness.

TO CARDINAL MANNING

I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,Or straining for the angel of the light,Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,When I behold one lamp that through our fenGoes hourly where most noisome; hear againA tongue that loathsomeness will not affrightFrom speaking to the soul of us forthrightWhat things our craven senses keep from ken.This is the doing of the Christ; the wayHe went on earth; the service above guileTo prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allaySuch misery as by these present signsBrings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.

TO COLONEL CHARLES

(DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)

IAn English heart, my commandant,A soldier’s eye you have, awakeTo right and left; with looks askantOn bulwarks not of adamant,Where white our Channel waters break.IIWhere Grisnez winks at DungenessAcross the ruffled strip of salt,You look, and like the prospect less.On men and guns would you lay stress,To bid the Island’s foemen halt.IIIWhile loud the Year is raising cryAt birth to know if it must bearIn history the bloody dye,An English heart, a soldier’s eye,For the old country first will care.IVAnd how stands she, artillerist,Among the vapours waxing dense,With cannon charged?  ’Tis hist! and hist!And now she screws a gouty fist,And now she counts to clutch her pence.VWith shudders chill as aconite,The couchant chewer of the cudWill start at times in pussy frightBefore the dogs, when reads her spriteThe streaks predicting streams of blood.VIShe thinks they may mean something; thinksThey may mean nothing: haply both.Where darkness all her daylight drinks,She fain would find a leader lynx,Not too much taxing mental sloth.VIICleft like the fated house in twain,One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench!Gambetta’s word on dull MacMahon:‘The cow that sees a passing train’:So spies she Russian, German, French.VIIIShe? no, her weakness: she unbracedAmong those athletes fronting storms!The muscles less of steel than paste,Why, they of nature feel distasteFor flash, much more for push, of arms.IXThe poet sings, and well know we,That ‘iron draws men after it.’But towering wealth may seem the treeWhich bears the fruit Indemnity,And draw as fast as battle’s fit,XIf feeble be the hand on guard,Alas, alas!  And nations areStill the mad forces, though the scarred.Should they once deem our emblem PardWagger of tail for all save war;—XIMechanically screwed to flailHis flanks by Presses conjuring fear;—A money-bag with head and tail;—Too late may valour then avail!As you beheld, my cannonier,XIIWhen with the staff of Benedek,On the plateau of Königgrätz,You saw below that wedgeing speck;Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck,Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets. February 1887.

TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS

IStrike not thy dog with a stick!   I did it yesterday:Not to undo though I gainedThe Paradise: heavy it rained   On Kobold’s flanks, and he lay.IILittle Bruno, our long-ear pup,   From his hunt had come back to my heel.I heard a sharp worrying sound,And Bruno foamed on the ground,   With Koby as making a meal.IIII did what I could not undo   Were the gates of the Paradise shutBehind me: I deemed it was just.I left Koby crouched in the dust,   Some yards from the woodman’s hut.IVHe bewhimpered his welting, and I   Scarce thought it enough for him: so,By degrees, through the upper box-grove,Within me an old story hove,   Of a man and a dog: you shall know.VThe dog was of novel breed,   The Shannon retriever, untried:His master, an old Irish lord,In an oaken armchair snored   At midnight, whisky beside.VIPerched up a desolate tower,   Where the black storm-wind was a whipTo set it nigh spinning, these twoWere alone, like the last of a crew,   Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.VIIThe dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;   He quitted his couch on the rug,Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;And, finding the signals unmarked,   Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.VIIIHe pulled till his master jumped   For fury of wrath, and laid onWith the length of a tough knotted staff,Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,   And leave a sheer carcase anon.IXThat done, he sat, panted, and cursed   The vile cross of this brute: nevermoreWould he house it to rear such a cur!The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,   Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.XThen his master raised head too, and sniffed:   It struck him the dog had a senseThat honoured both dam and sire.You have guessed how the tower was afire.   The Shannon retriever dates thence.XII mused: saw the pup ease his heart   Of his instinct for chasing, and sinkOverwrought by excitement so new:A scene that for Koby to view   Was the seizure of nerves in a link.XIIAnd part sympathetic, and part   Imitatively, raged my poor brute;And I, not thinking of ill,Doing eviller: nerves are still   Our savage too quick at the root.XIIIThey spring us: I proved it, albeit   I played executioner thenFor discipline, justice, the like.Yon stick I had handy to strike   Should have warned of the tyrant in men.XIVYou read in your History books,   How the Prince in his youth had a mindFor governing gently his land.Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,   When the temper is other than kind!XVAt home all was well; Koby’s ribs   Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,He forgives me, his criminal airThrows a shade of Llewellyn’s despair   For the hound slain for saving his child.