Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 9

I

He leaped. With none to hinder, Of Aetna's fiery scoriae In the next vomit-shower, made he A more peculiar cinder.

And this great Doctor, can it be, He left no saner recipe For men at issue with despair?

Admiring, even his poet owns, While noting his fine lyric tones, The last of him was heels in air!

II

Comes Reverence, her features Amazed to see high Wisdom hear, With glimmer of a faunish leer, One mock her pride of creatures.

Shall such sad incident degrade A stature casting sunniest shade?

O Reverence! let Reason swim; Each life its critic deed reveals; And him reads Reason at his heels, If heels in air the last of him!

ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM

I

The day that is the night of days, With cannon-fire for sun ablaze We spy from any billow's lift; And England still this tidal drift!

Would she to sainted forethought vow A s.p.a.ce before the thunders flood, That martyr of its hour might now Spare her the tears of blood.

II

Asleep upon her ancient deeds, She hugs the vision plethora breeds, And counts her manifold increase Of treasure in the fruits of peace.

What curse on earth's improvident, When the dread trumpet shatters rest, Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content As cradle rocked from breast.

III

She, impious to the Lord of Hosts, The valour of her offspring boasts, Mindless that now on land and main His heeded prayer is active brain.

No more great heart may guard the home, Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam, We see not distant heave.

IV

They stand to be her sacrifice, The sons this mother flings like dice, To face the odds and brave the Fates; As in those days of starry dates, When cannon cannon's counterblast Awakened, muzzle muzzle bowled, And high in swathe of smoke the mast Its fighting rag outrolled.

1891.

TARDY SPRING

Now the North wind ceases, The warm South-west awakes; Swift fly the fleeces, Thick the blossom-flakes.

Now hill to hill has made the stride, And distance waves the without end: Now in the breast a door flings wide; Our farthest smiles, our next is friend.

And song of England's rush of flowers Is this full breeze with mellow stops, That spins the lark for s.h.i.+ne, for showers; He drinks his hurried flight, and drops.

The stir in memory seem these things, Which out of moistened turf and clay Astrain for light push patient rings, Or leap to find the waterway.

'Tis equal to a wonder done, Whatever simple lives renew Their tricks beneath the father sun, As though they caught a broken clue; So hard was earth an eyewink back: But now the common life has come, The blotting cloud a dappled pack, The gra.s.ses one vast underhum.

A City clothed in snow and soot, With lamps for day in ghostly rows, Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot, The river that reflective flows: And there did fog down crypts of street Play spectre upon eye and mouth:- Their faces are a gla.s.s to greet This magic of the whirl for South.

A burly joy each creature swells With sound of its own hungry quest; Earth has to fill her empty wells, And speed the service of the nest; The phantom of the snow-wreath melt, That haunts the farmer's look abroad, Who sees what tomb a white night built, Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod.

For iron Winter held her firm; Across her sky he laid his hand; And bird he starved, he stiffened worm; A sightless heaven, a shaven land.

Her s.h.i.+vering Spring feigned fast asleep, The bitten buds dared not unfold: We raced on roads and ice to keep Thought of the girl we love from cold.

But now the North wind ceases, The warm South-west awakes, The heavens are out in fleeces, And earth's green banner shakes.

THE LABOURER

For a Heracles in his fighting ire there is never the glory that follows When ashen he lies and the poets arise to sing of the work he has done.

But to vision alive under shallows of sight, lo, the Labourer's crown is Apollo's, While stands he yet in his grime and sweat--to wrestle for fruits of the Sun.

Can an enemy wither his cheer? Not you, ye fair yellow-flowering ladies, Who join with your lords to jar the chords of a bosom heroic, and clog.

'Tis the faltering friend, an inanimate land, may drag a great soul to their Hades, And plunge him far from a beam of star till he hears the deep bay of the Dog.

Apparition is then of a monster-task, in a policy carving new fas.h.i.+ons: The winninger course than the rule of force, and the springs lured to run in a stream: He would bend tough oak, he would stiffen the reed, point Reason to swallow the pa.s.sions, Bid Britons awake two steps to take where one is a trouble extreme!

Not the less is he nerved with the Labourer's resolute hope: that by him shall be written, To honour his race, this deed of grace, for the weak from the strong made just: That her sons over seas in a rally of praise may behold a thrice vitalised Britain, As.h.i.+ne with the light of the doing of right: at the gates of the Future in trust.

FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE

Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain, Are they who point our pathway and sustain.

They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.

When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.

To see Life's formless offspring and subdue Desire of times unripe, we have these two, Whose union is right reason: join they hands, The world shall know itself and where it stands; What cowering angel and what upright beast Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.

When these two meet, a point of time is ours.

As in a land of waterfalls, that flow Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, Some eddies near the brink borne swift along Will capture hearing with the liquid song, So, while the headlong world's imperious force Resounded under, heard I these discourse.

First words, where down my woodland walk she led, To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:

- Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, When still I find you in this mire alone.

- The few steps taken at a funeral pace By men had slain me but for those you trace.

- Look I once back, a broken pinion I: Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!

- Needs must you drink of me while here you live, And make me rich in feeling I can give.

- A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: Yet must I read my sister for the How.