Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 6

Precedents icily written on high Challenge the Tentatives hot to rebel.

Our Mother, who speeds her bloomful quick For the march, reads which the impediment well.

She smiles when of sapience is their boast.

O loose of the tug between blood run dry And blood running flame may our offspring run!

May brain democratic be king of the host!

Less then shall the volumes of History tell Of the stop in progression, the slip in relapse, That counts us a sand-slack inch hard won Beneath an oppressive inc.u.mbent perhaps.

Let the senile lords in a parchment sky, And the generous turbulents drunken of morn, Their battle of instincts put by, A moment examine this field: On a Roman street cast thoughtful eye, Along to the mounts from the bog-forest weald.

It merits a glance at our history's maps, To see across Britain's old s.h.a.ggy unshorn, Through the Parties in strife internecine, foot The ruler's close-reckoned direct to the mark.

From the head ran the vanquisher's orderly route, In the stride of his forts through the tangle and dark.

From the head runs the paved firm way for advance, And we shoulder, we wrangle! The light on us shed Shows dense beetle blackness in swarm, lurid Chance, The G.o.ddess of gamblers, above. From the head, Then when it worked for the birth of a star Fraternal with heaven's in beauty and ray, Sprang the Acropolis. Ask what crown Comes of our tides of the blood at war, For men to bequeath generations down!

And ask what thou wast when the Purse was brimmed: What high-bounding ball for the G.o.ds at play: A Conservative youth! who the cream-bowl skimmed, Desiring affairs to be left as they are.

So, thou takest Youth's natural place in the fray, As a Tentative, combating Peace, Our lullaby word for decay. - There will come an immediate decree In thy mind for the opposite party's decease, If he bends not an instant knee.

Expunge it: extinguis.h.i.+ng counts poor gain.

And accept a mild word of police:- Be mannerly, measured; refrain From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks.

Our political, even as the merchant main, A temperate gale requires For the s.h.i.+p that haven seeks; Neither G.o.d of the winds nor his bellowsy squires.

Then observe the antagonist, con His reasons for rocking the lullaby word.

You stand on a different stage of the stairs.

He fought certain battles, yon senile lord.

In the strength of thee, feel his bequest to his heirs.

We are now on his inches of ground hard won, For a perch to a flight o'er his resting fence.

Does it knock too hard at thy head if I say, That Time is both father and son?

Tough lesson, when senses are floods over sense! - Discern the paternal of Now As the Then of thy present tense.

You may pull as you will either way, You can never be other than one.

So, be filial. Giants to slay Demand knowing eyes in their Jack.

There are those whom we push from the path with respect.

Bow to that elder, though seeing him bow To the backward as well, for a thunderous back Upon thee. In his day he was not all wrong.

Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked.

He scrambled to sh.o.r.e with a wors.h.i.+p of sh.o.r.e.

The Future he sees as the slippery murk; The Past as his doctrinal library lore.

He stands now the rock to the wave's wild wash.

Yet thy lumpish antagonist once did work Heroical, one of our strong.

His gold to retain and his dross reject, Engage him, but humour, not aiming to quash.

Detest the dead squat of the Turk, And suffice it to move him along.

Drink of faith in the brains a full draught Before the oration: beware Lest rhetoric moonily waft Whither horrid activities snare.

Rhetoric, juice for the mob Despising more luminous grape, Oft at its fount has it laughed In the cataracts rolling for rape Of a Reason left single to sob!

'Tis known how the permanent never is writ In blood of the pa.s.sions: mercurial they, s.h.i.+fty their issue: stir not that pit To the game our brutes best play.

But with rhetoric loose, can we check man's brute?

a.s.semblies of men on their legs invoke Excitement for wholesome diversion: there shoot Electrical sparks between their dry thatch And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light.

'Tis instant between you: the trick of a catch (To match a Batrachian croak) Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins.

Then may it be rather the well-worn joke Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem, When thou readest that form of thy homage to brains!

For the secret why demagogues fail, Though they carry hot mobs to the red extreme, And knock out or knock in the nail (We will rank them as flatly sincere, Devoutly detesting a wrong, Engines o'ercharged with our human steam), Question thee, seething amid the throng.

And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-heat; Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here; - Aught more than the banquet and roundelay, That is closed with a terrible terminal wail, A retributive black ding-dong?

And ask of thyself: This furious Yea Of a speech I thump to repeat, In the cause I would have prevail, For seed of a nouris.h.i.+ng wheat, IS IT ACCEPTED OF SONG?

Does it sound to the mind through the ear, Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet?

Thou wilt find it a test severe; Unerring whatever the theme.

Rings it for Reason a melody clear, We have bidden old Chaos retreat; We have called on Creation to hear; All forces that make us are one full stream.

Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse, Showing its practical value and weight, Pipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse, Lead thee aloft to that high estate. - The test is conclusive, I deem: It embraces or mortally bites.

We have then the key-note for debate: A Senate that sits on the heights Over discords, to shape and amend.

And no singer is needed to serve The musical G.o.d, my friend.

Needs only his law on a sensible nerve: A law that to Measure invites, Forbidding the pa.s.sions contend.

Is it accepted of Song?

And if then the blunt answer be Nay, Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde, Slaves of the G.o.ddess of h.o.a.r-old sway, The Queen of delirious rites, Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord, Pursuing insensate, seething in throng, Their wild idea to its ashen end.

Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong, Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend!

But thou, should the answer ring Ay, Hast warrant of seed for thy word: The musical G.o.d is nigh To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer Through the shoals: is it worthy of Song, There are souls all woman to hear, Woman to bear and renew.

For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs, Broad as the arms of his blue, Fine as the web of his rays, Justice, whose voice is a melody clear, The one sure life for the numbered long, From him are the brutal and vain, The vile, the excessive, out-thrust: He points to the G.o.d on the upmost throne: He is the saver of grain, The sifter of spirit from dust.

He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain The virilities: Measure alone Has votaries rich in the male: Fathers embracing no cloud, Sowing no harvestless main: Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed To create, to perpetuate; woo, win, wed; Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own, Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff Simulacra, though solid they sail, And seem such imperial stuff: Yes, the living divide off the dead.

Then thou with thy furies outgrown, Not as Cybele's beast will thy head lash tail So praeter-determinedly thermonous, Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled.

Thou under stress of the strife Shalt hear for sustainment supreme The cry of the conscience of Life: KEEP THE YOUNG GENERATIONS IN HAIL, AND BEQUEATH THEM NO TUMBLED HOUSE!

There hast thou the sacred theme, Therein the inveterate spur, Of the Innermost. See her one blink In vision past eyeb.a.l.l.s. Not thee She cares for, but us. Follow her.

Follow her, and thou wilt not sink.

With thy soul the Life espouse: This Life of the visible, audible, ring With thy love tight about; and no death will be; The name be an empty thing, And woe a forgotten old trick: And battle will come as a challenge to drink; As a warrior's wound each transient sting.

She leads to the Uppermost link by link; Exacts but vision, desires not vows.

Above us the singular number to see; The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick, A dot or a stop: that is our task; Her lesson in figured arithmetic, For the letters of Life behind its mask; Her flower-like look under fearful brows.

As for thy special case, O my friend, one must think Ma.s.silia's victim, who held the carouse For the length of a carnival year, Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice.

For thee, by our law, no alternatives were: Thy fall was a.s.sured ere thou camest to a voice.

He cancelled the ravaging Plague, With the roll of his fat off the cliff.

Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink, Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague And catches the not too pink, Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause Is the cause of community. Iterate, Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite: Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: The manner of one that would expiate His share in grandmotherly Laws, Which do the dark thing to destroy, Under aspect of water so guilelessly white For the general use, by the devils befouled.

Enough, poor prodigal boy!

Thou hast listened with patience; another had howled.

Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned.

And 'tis bony: denied thee thy succulent half Of the parable's blessing, to swineherd returned: A Sermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf!

By my faith, there is feasting to come, Not the less, when our Earth we have seen Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs: Who gives us the man-loving Nazarene, The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the vines.

By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom; Revelations, delights. I can hear a faint crow Of the c.o.c.k of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct; As down the new shafting of mines, A cry of the metally gnome.

When our Earth we have seen, and have linked With the home of the Spirit to whom we unfold, Imprisoned humanity open will throw Its fortress gates, and the rivers of gold For the congregate friendliness flow.

Then the meaning of Earth in her children behold: Glad eyes, frank hands, and a fellows.h.i.+p real: And laughter on lips, as the birds' outburst At the flooding of light. No robbery then The feast, nor a robber's abode the home, For a furnished model of our first den!

Nor Life as a stationed wheel; Nor History written in blood or in foam, For vendetta of Parties in cursing accursed.

The G.o.d in the conscience of mult.i.tudes feel, And we feel deep to Earth at her heart, We have her communion with men, New ground, new skies for appeal.

Yield into harness thy best and thy worst; Away on the trot of thy servitude start, Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air.

If courage should falter, 'tis wholesome to kneel.

Remember that well, for the secret with some, Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer, And free from impurities tower-like stand.

I promise not more, save that feasting will come To a mind and a body no longer inversed: The sense of large charity over the land, Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal Through the active machine: lean fare, But it carries a sparkle! And now enough, And part we as comrades part, To meet again never or some day or soon.

Our season of drought is reminder rude:- No later than yesternoon, I looked on the horse of a cart, By the wayside water-trough.

How at every draught of his bride of thirst His nostrils widened! The sight was good: Food for us, food, such as first Drew our thoughts to earth's lowly for food.