Poems. Volume 1

George Meredith

Poems – Volume 1

CHILLIANWALLAH 1

Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!   Where our brothers fought and bled,O thy name is natural music   And a dirge above the dead!Though we have not been defeated,   Though we can’t be overcome,Still, whene’er thou art repeated,   I would fain that grief were dumb.Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!   ’Tis a name so sad and strange,Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings   Ringing many a mournful change;But the wildness and the sorrow   Have a meaning of their own—Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow   Can relieve the dismal tone!Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!   ’Tis a village dark and low,By the bloody Jhelum river   Bridged by the foreboding foe;And across the wintry water   He is ready to retreat,When the carnage and the slaughter   Shall have paid for his defeat.Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!   ’Tis a wild and dreary plain,Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,   Matted with the gory stain.There the murder-mouthed artillery,   In the deadly ambuscade,Wrought the thunder of its treachery   On the skeleton brigade.Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!   When the night set in with rain,Came the savage plundering devils   To their work among the slain;And the wounded and the dying   In cold blood did share the doomOf their comrades round them lying,   Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!   Thou wilt be a doleful chord,And a mystic note of mourning   That will need no chiming word;And that heart will leap with anguish   Who may understand thee best;But the hopes of all will languish   Till thy memory is at rest.

THE DOE: A FRAGMENT

(FROM‘WANDERING WILLIE’)

And—‘Yonder look! yoho! yoho!Nancy is off!’ the farmer cried,Advancing by the river side,Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;—‘So,My girl, who else could leap like that?So neatly! like a lady!  ‘Zounds!Look at her how she leads the hounds!’And waving his dusty beaver hat,He cheered across the chase-filled water,And clapt his arm about his daughter,And gave to Joan a courteous hug,And kiss that, like a stubborn plugFrom generous vats in vastness rounded,The inner wealth and spirit sounded:Eagerly pointing South, where, lo,The daintiest, fleetest-footed doeLed o’er the fields and thro’ the furzeBeyond: her lively delicate earsPrickt up erect, and in her trackA dappled lengthy-striding pack.Scarce had they cast eyes upon her,When every heart was wagered on her,And half in dread, and half delight,They watched her lovely bounding flight;As now across the flashing green,And now beneath the stately trees,And now far distant in the dene,She headed on with graceful ease:Hanging aloft with doubled knees,At times athwart some hedge or gate;And slackening pace by slow degrees,As for the foremost foe to wait.Renewing her outstripping rateWhene’er the hot pursuers neared,By garden wall and paled estate,Where clambering gazers whooped and cheered.Here winding under elm and oak,And slanting up the sunny hill:Splashing the water here like smokeAmong the mill-holms round the mill.And—‘Let her go; she shows her game,My Nancy girl, my pet and treasure!’The farmer sighed: his eyes with pleasureBrimming: ‘’Tis my daughter’s name,My second daughter lying yonder.’And Willie’s eye in search did wander,And caught at once, with moist regard,The white gleams of a grey churchyard.‘Three weeks before my girl had gone,And while upon her pillows propped,She lay at eve; the weakling fawn—For still it seems a fawn just droptA se’nnight—to my Nancy’s bedI brought to make my girl a gift:The mothers of them both were dead:And both to bless it was my drift,By giving each a friend; not thinkingHow rapidly my girl was sinking.And I remember how, to patIts neck, she stretched her hand so weak,And its cold nose against her cheekPressed fondly: and I fetched the matTo make it up a couch just by her,Where in the lone dark hours to lie:For neither dear old nurse nor IWould any single wish deny her.And there unto the last it lay;And in the pastures cared to playLittle or nothing: there its mealsAnd milk I brought: and even nowThe creature such affection feelsFor that old room that, when and how,’Tis strange to mark, it slinks and stealsTo get there, and all day conceals.And once when nurse who, since that time,Keeps house for me, was very sick,Waking upon the midnight chime,And listening to the stair-clock’s click,I heard a rustling, half uncertain,Close against the dark bed-curtain:And while I thrust my leg to kick,And feel the phantom with my feet,A loving tongue began to lickMy left hand lying on the sheet;And warm sweet breath upon me blew,And that ’twas Nancy then I knew.So, for her love, I had good causeTo have the creature “Nancy” christened.’He paused, and in the moment’s pause,His eyes and Willie’s strangely glistened.Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hungWith face averted, near enoughTo hear, and sob unheard; the youngAnd careless ones had scampered offMeantime, and sought the loftiest placeTo beacon the approaching chase.‘Daily upon the meads to browse,Goes Nancy with those dairy cowsYou see behind the clematis:And such a favourite she is,That when fatigued, and helter skelter,Among them from her foes to shelter,She dashes when the chase is over,They’ll close her in and give her cover,And bend their horns against the hounds,And low, and keep them out of bounds!From the house dogs she dreads no harm,And is good friends with all the farm,Man, and bird, and beast, howbeitTheir natures seem so opposite.And she is known for many a mile,And noted for her splendid style,For her clear leap and quick slight hoof;Welcome she is in many a roof.And if I say, I love her, man!I say but little: her fine eyes fullOf memories of my girl, at YuleAnd May-time, make her dearer thanDumb brute to men has been, I think.So dear I do not find her dumb.I know her ways, her slightest wink,So well; and to my hand she’ll come,Sidelong, for food or a caress,Just like a loving human thing.Nor can I help, I do confess,Some touch of human sorrowingTo think there may be such a doubtThat from the next world she’ll be shut out,And parted from me!  And well I mindHow, when my girl’s last moments came,Her soft eyes very soft and kind,She joined her hands and prayed the same,That she “might meet her father, mother,Sister Bess, and each dear brother,And with them, if it might be, oneWho was her last companion.”Meaning the fawn—the doe you mark—For my bay mare was then a foal,And time has passed since then:—but hark!’For like the shrieking of a soulShut in a tomb, a darkened cryOf inward-wailing agonySurprised them, and all eyes on eachFixed in the mute-appealing speechOf self-reproachful apprehension:Knowing not what to think or do:But Joan, recovering first, broke throughThe instantaneous suspension,And knelt upon the ground, and guessedThe bitterness at a glance, and pressedInto the comfort of her breastThe deep-throed quaking shape that droopedIn misery’s wilful aggravation,Before the farmer as he stooped,Touched with accusing consternation:Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:—‘Not me! not me!  Oh, no, no, no!Not me!  God will not take me in!Nothing can wipe away my sin!I shall not see her: you will go;You and all that she loves so:Not me! not me!  Oh, no, no, no!’Colourless, her long black hair,Like seaweed in a tempest tossedTangling astray, to Joan’s careShe yielded like a creature lost:Yielded, drooping toward the ground,As doth a shape one half-hour drowned,And heaved from sea with mast and spar,All dark of its immortal star.And on that tender heart, inuredTo flatter basest grief, and fightDespair upon the brink of night,She suffered herself to sink, assuredOf refuge; and her ear inclinedTo comfort; and her thoughts resignedTo counsel; her wild hair let brushFrom off her weeping brows; and shookWith many little sobs that tookDeeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs,Long sighs, they sank; and to the ‘hush!’Of Joan’s gentle chide, she soughtChildlike to check them as she ought,Looking up at her infantwise.And Willie, gazing on them both,Shivered with bliss through blood and brain,To see the darling of his trothLike a maternal angel strainThe sinful and the sinless childAt once on either breast, and thereIn peace and promise reconciledUnite them: nor could Nature’s careWith subtler sweet beneficenceHave fed the springs of penitence,Still keeping true, though harshly tried,The vital prop of human pride.

BEAUTY ROHTRAUT

(FROM MÖRICKE)

What is the name of King Ringang’s daughter?   Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!And what does she do the livelong day,Since she dare not knit and spin alway?O hunting and fishing is ever her play!And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!I’d hunt and fish right merrily!         Be silent, heart!And it chanced that, after this some time,—   Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut,—The boy in the Castle has gained access,And a horse he has got and a huntsman’s dress,To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;And, O! that a king’s son I might be!Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.         Hush! hush! my heart.Under a grey old oak they sat,   Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!She laughs: ‘Why look you so slyly at me?If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.’Cried the breathless boy, ‘kiss thee?’But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut’s mouth.         Down! down! mad heart.Then slowly and silently they rode home,—   Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!The boy was lost in his delight:‘And, wert thou Empress this very night,I would not heed or feel the blight;Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wistHow Beauty Rohtraut’s mouth I kiss’d.         Hush! hush! wild heart.’

THE OLIVE BRANCH

A dove flew with an Olive Branch;It crossed the sea and reached the shore,And on a ship about to launchDropped down the happy sign it bore.‘An omen’ rang the glad acclaim!The Captain stooped and picked it up,‘Be then the Olive Branch her name,’Cried she who flung the christening cup.The vessel took the laughing tides;It was a joyous revelryTo see her dashing from her sidesThe rough, salt kisses of the sea.And forth into the bursting foamShe spread her sail and sped away,The rolling surge her restless home,Her incense wreaths the showering spray.Far out, and where the riot wavesRun mingling in tumultuous throngs,She danced above a thousand graves,And heard a thousand briny songs.Her mission with her manly crew,Her flag unfurl’d, her title told,She took the Old World to the New,And brought the New World to the Old.Secure of friendliest welcomings,She swam the havens sheening fair;Secure upon her glad white wings,She fluttered on the ocean air.To her no more the bastioned fortShot out its swarthy tongue of fire;From bay to bay, from port to port,Her coming was the world’s desire.And tho’ the tempest lashed her oft,And tho’ the rocks had hungry teeth,And lightnings split the masts aloft,And thunders shook the planks beneath,And tho’ the storm, self-willed and blind,Made tatters of her dauntless sail,And all the wildness of the windWas loosed on her, she did not fail;But gallantly she ploughed the main,And gloriously her welcome pealed,And grandly shone to sky and plainThe goodly bales her decks revealed;Brought from the fruitful eastern glebesWhere blow the gusts of balm and spice,Or where the black blockaded ribsAre jammed ’mongst ghostly fleets of ice,Or where upon the curling hillsGlow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,Or where the hand of labour drillsThe stubbornness of earth to shape;Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,And handicrafts and shapely wares,And spinnings of the hermit worms,And fruits that bloom by lions’ lairs.Come, read the meaning of the deep!The use of winds and waters learn!’Tis not to make the mother weepFor sons that never will return;’Tis not to make the nations showContempt for all whom seas divide;’Tis not to pamper war and woe,Nor feed traditionary pride;’Tis not to make the floating bulkMask death upon its slippery deck,Itself in turn a shattered hulk,A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.It is to knit with loving lipThe interests of land to land;To join in far-seen fellowshipThe tropic and the polar strand.It is to make that foaming StrengthWhose rebel forces wrestle stillThro’ all his boundaried breadth and lengthBecome a vassal to our will.It is to make the various skies,And all the various fruits they vaunt,And all the dowers of earth we prize,Subservient to our household want.And more, for knowledge crowns the gainOf intercourse with other souls,And Wisdom travels not in vainThe plunging spaces of the poles.The wild Atlantic’s weltering gloom,Earth-clasping seas of North and South,The Baltic with its amber spume,The Caspian with its frozen mouth;The broad Pacific, basking bright,And girdling lands of lustrous growth,Vast continents and isles of light,Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;She visits these, traversing each;They ripen to the common sun;Thro’ diverse forms and different speech,The world’s humanity is one.O may her voice have power to sayHow soon the wrecking discords cease,When every wandering wave is gayWith golden argosies of peace!Now when the ark of human fate,Long baffled by the wayward wind,Is drifting with its peopled freight,Safe haven on the heights to find;Safe haven from the drowning slimeOf evil deeds and Deluge wrath;—To plant again the foot of TimeUpon a purer, firmer path;’Tis now the hour to probe the ground,To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,The fathoms of the deep to sound,And send abroad the missioned bird,On strengthened wing for evermore,Let Science, swiftly as she can,Fly seaward on from shore to shore,And bind the links of man to man;And like that fair propitious DoveBless future fleets about to launch;Make every freight a freight of love,And every ship an Olive Branch.

SONG

Love within the lover’s breastBurns like Hesper in the west,O’er the ashes of the sun,Till the day and night are done;Then when dawn drives up her car—Lo! it is the morning star.Love! thy love pours down on mineAs the sunlight on the vine,As the snow-rill on the vale,As the salt breeze in the sail;As the song unto the bird,On my lips thy name is heard.As a dewdrop on the roseIn thy heart my passion glows,As a skylark to the skyUp into thy breast I fly;As a sea-shell of the seaEver shall I sing of thee.

THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.The sun’s betrothing kiss it never knows,Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;But ever in a placid, pure repose,More like a spirit with its look serene,Droops its pale cheek veined thro’ with infant green.Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;The year’s own darling and the Summer’s Queen!Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.Much of that early prophet look she shows,Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;Like a soft evening over sunset snows,Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fairIn all that glads the eye and charms the air;In all that wakes emotions in the mindAnd sows sweet sympathies for human kind.Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!For each, fulfilling nature’s law, fulfilsItself and its own aspirations pure;Living and dying; letting faith ensureNew life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.Each perfect in its place; and each contentWith that perfection which its being meant:Divided not by months that intervene,But linked by all the flowers that bud between.Forever smiling thro’ its season brief,The one in glory and the one in grief:Forever painting to our museful sight,How lowlihead and loveliness unite.Born from the first blind yearning of the earthTo be a mother and give happy birth,Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;And ere the snows have melted from the grass,And not a strip of greensward doth appear,Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass!While in the ripe enthronement of the year,Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich airWith her so sweet, delicious bridal breath,—Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,And starr’d with dews upon her forehead clear,Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should beWho takes the land’s devotion as her fee,—The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,Nature’s most beautiful and perfect flower.

THE DEATH OF WINTER

When April with her wild blue eye   Comes dancing over the grass,And all the crimson buds so shy   Peep out to see her pass;As lightly she loosens her showery locks   And flutters her rainy wings;      Laughingly stoops         To the glass of the stream,      And loosens and loops         Her hair by the gleam,While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks   Go frolicking round in rings;—Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,Turns on his back and prepares to die,For he cannot live longer under the sky.Down the valleys glittering green,Down from the hills in snowy rills,He melts between the border sheen   And leaps the flowery verges!He cannot choose but brighten their hues,And tho’ he would creep, he fain must leap,   For the quick Spring spirit urges.Down the vale and down the daleHe leaps and lights, till his moments fail,Buried in blossoms red and pale,   While the sweet birds sing his dirges!O Winter!  I’d live that life of thine,With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,And never a song my whole life long,—Were such delicious burial mine!To die and be buried, and so remainA wandering brook in April’s train,Fixing my dying eyes for ayeOn the dawning brows of maiden May.

SONG

   The moon is alone in the sky      As thou in my soul;   The sea takes her image to lie      Where the white ripples roll         All night in a dream,         With the light of her beam,Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.         The pebbles speak low         In the ebb and the flow,As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:         Nought other stirred         Save my heart all unheardBeating to bliss that is past evermore.

JOHN LACKLAND

   A wicked man is bad enough on earth;   But O the baleful lustre of a chief   Once pledged in tyranny!  O star of dearth   Darkly illumining a nation’s grief!   How many men have worn thee on their brows!   Alas for them and us!  God’s precious gift   Of gracious dispensation got by theft—   The damning form of false unholy vows!   The thief of God and man must have his fee:   And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince—   Basest of England’s banes before or since!   Thrice traitor, coward, thief!  O thou shalt be   The historic warning, trampled and abhorr’dWho dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!

THE SLEEPING CITY

A Princess in the eastern talePaced thro’ a marble city pale,And saw in ghastly shapes of stoneThe sculptured life she breathed alone;Saw, where’er her eye might range,Herself the only child of change;And heard her echoed footfall chimeBetween Oblivion and Time;And in the squares where fountains played,And up the spiral balustrade,Along the drowsy corridors,Even to the inmost sleeping floors,Surveyed in wonder chilled with dreadThe seemingness of Death, not dead;Life’s semblance but without its storm,And silence frosting every form;Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves,Like suddenly arrested wavesAbout to sink, about to rise,—Strange meaning in their stricken eyes;And cloths and couches live with flameOf leopards fierce and lions tame,And hunters in the jungle reed,Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;Dumb chambers hushed with fold on fold,And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold;White casements o’er embroidered seats,Looking on solitudes of streets,—On palaces and column’d towers,Unconscious of the stony hours;Harsh gateways startled at a sound,With burning lamps all burnish’d round;—Surveyed in awe this wealth and state,Touched by the finger of a Fate,And drew with slow-awakening fearThe sternness of the atmosphere;—And gradually, with stealthier foot,Became herself a thing as mute,And listened,—while with swift alarmHer alien heart shrank from the charm;Yet as her thoughts dilating rose,Took glory in the great repose,And over every postured formSpread lava-like and brooded warm,—And fixed on every frozen faceBeheld the record of its race,And in each chiselled feature knewThe stormy life that once blushed thro’;—The ever-present of the pastThere written; all that lightened last,Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair,Beauty and rage, all written there;—Enchanted Passions! whose pale doomIs never flushed by blight or bloom,But sentinelled by silent orbs,Whose light the pallid scene absorbs.—Like such a one I pace alongThis City with its sleeping throng;Like her with dread and awe, that turnsTo rapture, and sublimely yearns;—For now the quiet stars look downOn lights as quiet as their own;The streets that groaned with traffic showAs if with silence paved below;The latest revellers are at peace,The signs of in-door tumult cease,From gay saloon and low resort,Comes not one murmur or report:The clattering chariot rolls not by,The windows show no waking eye,The houses smoke not, and the airIs clear, and all the midnight fair.The centre of the striving world,Round which the human fate is curled,To which the future crieth wild,—Is pillowed like a cradled child.The palace roof that guards a crown,The mansion swathed in dreamy down,Hovel, court, and alley-shed,Sleep in the calmness of the dead.Now while the many-motived heartLies hushed—fireside and busy mart,And mortal pulses beat the tuneThat charms the calm cold ear o’ the moonWhose yellowing crescent down the WestLeans listening, now when every breastIts basest or its purest heaves,The soul that joys, the soul that grieves;—While Fame is crowning happy browsThat day will blindly scorn, while vowsOf anguished love, long hidden, speakFrom faltering tongue and flushing cheekThe language only known to dreams,Rich eloquence of rosy themes!While on the Beauty’s folded mouthDisdain just wrinkles baby youth;While Poverty dispenses almsTo outcasts, bread, and healing balms;While old Mammon knows himselfThe greatest beggar for his pelf;While noble things in darkness grope,The Statesman’s aim, the Poet’s hope;The Patriot’s impulse gathers fire,And germs of future fruits aspire;—Now while dumb nature owns its links,And from one common fountain drinks,Methinks in all around I seeThis Picture in Eternity;—A marbled City planted thereWith all its pageants and despair;A peopled hush, a Death not dead,But stricken with Medusa’s head;—And in the Gorgon’s glance for ayeThe lifeless immortalityReveals in sculptured calmness allIts latest life beyond recall.

THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

   Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy   As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.   Tender to tearfulness—childlike, and manly, and motherly;Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground.

THE POETRY OF SPENSER

   Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;   Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:   Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;Here in our May-blood we wander, careering ’mongst ladies and knights.

THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

   Picture some Isle smiling green ’mid the white-foaming ocean;—   Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;   Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm’d by one great human heart.

THE POETRY OF MILTON

   Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,   Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,   Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthenThe mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright spheres.

THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY

   Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyréan   Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!   Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing OrientLo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.

THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE

   A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,   And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed—   Renewed thro’ all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.