Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 12

She sprang from dust to drink of earth's cool dew, The breath of swaying gra.s.ses share, Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear, At wrestle with the tyrannic strong; Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew, As immortals may be in the mortal sphere.

Read through her launching heart, who had lain long With Earth and heard till it became her own Our good Great Mother's eve and matin song: The humming burden of Earth's toil to feed Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth, Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both, Of either aided on their hard ascent.

Now when she looked, with love's benign delight After great ecstasy, along the plains, What foulest impregnation of her sight Transformed the scene to mult.i.tudinous troops Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent, As were they winter sedges, broken hoops, Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts, With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains?

Recked she that some perverting devil had limned Earth's proudest to spout scorn of the Maker's hand, Who could a day behold these deathly hosts, And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed, A ribanded and gemmed elected few, Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:- Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame: Beautiful statures; hideous, By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains, And flexile where is manhood straight; Mortuaries where warm should beat The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet: Who dared in cantique impious Proclaim the Just, to whom was due Cathedral grat.i.tude in the pomp of state, For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains, On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew.

Surely a devil's land when that meant death for each!

Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus, With all the body's life to plump the leech, Is Nature's way, she knew. The abominable scene Spat at the skies; and through her veins, To cloud celestially sown, Ran venom of what nourishment Her dark sustainer subterrene Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack, Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains, Under derisive revels, p.r.o.ne As one clamped fast, with the interminable senseless blent.

VI

Now was her face white waves in the tempest's sharp flame-blink; Her skies shot black.

Now was it visioned infamy to drink Of earth's cool dew, and through the vines Frolic in pearly laughter with her young, Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung, After their sly shy ventures from the leaf, And promised bunches. Now it seemed The world was one malarious mire, Crying for purification: chief This land of France. It seemed A duteous desire To drink of life's hot flood, and the crimson streamed.

VII

She drank what makes man demon at the draught.

Her skies lowered black, Her lover flew, There swept a shudder over men.

Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed, For laughter was her spirit's weapon then.

The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew.

VIII

As mighty thews burst manacles, she went mad: Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits.

Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had!

To tread her down in her live grave beneath Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath, They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits.

Without they girdled her, made nest within.

There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake.

They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood; Believing it, in the mother's mind at strain, In the mother's fears, and in young Liberty's wail Alarmed, for her encompa.s.sed children's sake, The sole sure way to save her priceless bud.

Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail, Vengeance appeared as logically akin.

Insanely rational they; she rationally insane; And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin.

IX

Amid the plash of scarlet mud Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air, Not lack of love was her defect; The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France Breathing from exultation to despair At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance Soaring at each faint gleam o'er her abyss.

Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect, The frontier march she piped her sons, for where Her crouching outer enemy camped, Attendant on the deadlier inner's hiss.

She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine Of martial music, History's cherished tune; And they, the saintliest labourers that aye Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped; High-breasted to match men or elements, Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled: War's ragged pupils; many a wavering line, Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled, Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon, To jest at famine, ply The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field; Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents; Fronting the red artillery straighten spine; Buckle the s.h.i.+ver at sight of comrades strewn; Over an empty platter affect the merrily filled; Die, if the multiple hazards around said die; Downward measure a foeman mightily sized; Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised; Lyrical on into death's red roaring jaw-gape, steeled Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply.

Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon!

X

Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind rattle their thunder Loud through a night, and at dawn comes change to the great South- west, Hounds are the hounded in clouds, waves, forests, inverted the race: Lo, in the day's young beams the colossal invading pursuers Burst upon rocks and were foam; Ridged up a torrent crest; Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder; Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace.

Yesterday's clarion c.o.c.k scudded hen of the invalid comb; They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under; They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home; They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers; Quick as the trick of the wrist with the rapier, they the pursuers.

Heavens and men amazed heard the arrogant crying for grace; Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army dispieced; Saw such a s.h.i.+ft of the hunt as when t.i.tan Olympus clomb.

Fly! was the sportsman's word; and the note of the quarry rang, Chase!

XI

Banners from South, from East, Sheaves of pale banners drooping hole and shred; The captive brides of valour, Sabine Wives Plucked from the foeman's blushful bed, For glorious muted battle-tongues Of deeds along the horizon's red, At cost of unreluctant lives; Her toilful heroes homeward poured, To give their fevered mother air of the lungs.

She breathed, and in the breathing craved.

Environed as she was, at bay, Safety she kissed on her drawn sword, And waved for victory, for fresh victory waved: She craved for victory as her daily bread; For victory as her daily banquet raved.

XII

Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray; Desired if but to paint her pallid hue.

The pa.s.sion for that young horizon red, Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame, Like dotage of the past-meridian dame For some bright SunG.o.d adolescent, swelled Insatiate, to the voracious grew, The glutton's inward raveners bred; Till she, mankind's most dreaded, most abhorred, Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked, As by the weaving Fates impelled, To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord, Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked.

XIII

Banners from East, from South, She hugged him in them, feared the scourge they meant, Yet blindly hugged, and hungering built his throne.

So may you see the village innocent, With curtsey of shut lids and open mouth, In act to beg for sweets expect a loathly stone: See furthermore the Just in his measures weigh Her sufferings and her sins, dispense her meed.

False to her bridegroom lord of the miracle day, She fell: from his ethereal home observed Through love, grown alien love, not moved to plead Against the season's fruit for deadly Seed, But marking how she had aimed, and where she swerved, Why suffered, with a sad consenting thought.

Nor would he shun her sullen look, nor monstrous hold The doer of the monstrous; she aroused, She, the long tortured, suddenly freed, distraught, More strongly the divine in him than when Joy of her as she sprang from mould Drew him the midway heavens adown To clasp her in his arms espoused Before the sight of wondering men, And put upon the day a deathless crown.

The veins and arteries of her, fold in fold, His alien love laid open, to divide The martyred creature from her crimes; he knew What cowardice in her valour could reside; What strength her weakness covered; what abased Sublimity so illumining, and what raised This wallower in old slime to n.o.blest heights, Up to the union on the midway blue:- Day that the celestial grave Recorder hangs Among dark History's nocturnal lights, With vivid beams indicative to the quick Of all who have felt the vaulted body's pangs Beneath a mind in hopeless soaring sick.

She had forgot how, long enslaved, she yearned To the one helping hand above; Forgot her faith in the Great Undiscerned, Whereof she sprang aloft to her Angelical love That day: and he, the bright day's husband, still with love, Though alien, though to an upper seat retired, Behold a wrangling heart, as 'twere her soul On eddies of wild waters cast; In wilderness division; fired For domination, freedom, l.u.s.t, The Pleasures; lo, a witch's snaky bowl Set at her lips; the blood-drinker's madness fast Upon her; and therewith mistrust, Most of herself: a mouth of guile.

Compa.s.sionately could he smile, To hear the mouth disclaiming G.o.d, And clamouring for the Just!

Her thousand impulses, like torches, coursed City and field; and pushed abroad O'er hungry waves to thirsty sands, Flaring at further; she had grown to be The headless with the fearful hands; To slaughter, else to suicide, enforced.

But he, remembering how his love began, And of what creature, pitied when was plain Another measure of captivity: The need for strap and rod; The penitential prayers again; Again the bitter bowing down to dust; The burden on the flesh for who disclaims the G.o.d, The answer when is call upon the Just.

Whence her lost virtue had found refuge strode Her master, saying, 'I only; I who can!'

And echoed round her army, now her chain.

So learns the nation, closing Anarch's reign, That she had been in travail of a Man.

NAPOLEON

I

Cannon his name, Cannon his voice, he came.

Who heard of him heard shaken hills, An earth at quake, to quiet stamped; Who looked on him beheld the will of wills, The driver of wild flocks where lions ramped: Beheld War's liveries flee him, like lumped gra.s.s Nid-nod to ground beneath the cuffing storm; While laurelled over his Imperial form, Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey bra.s.s, Reverberant notes and long blew volant Fame.

Incarnate Victory, Power manifest, Infernal or G.o.d-given to mankind, On the quenched volcano's cusp did he take stand, A conquering army's height above the land, Which calls that army offspring of its breast, And sees it mid the starry camps enshrined; His eye the cannon's flame, The cannon's cave his mind.

II

To weld the nation in a name of dread, And scatter carrion flies off wounds unhealed, The Necessitated came, as comes from out Electric ebon lightning's javelin-head, Threatening agitation in the revealed Founts of our being; terrible with doubt, With radiance restorative. At one stride Athwart the Law he stood for sovereign sway.

That Soliform made featureless beside His brilliancy who neighboured: vapour they; Vapour what postured statues barred his tread.

On high in amphitheatre field on field, Italian, Egyptian, Austrian, Far heard and of the carnage discord clear, Bells of his escalading triumphs pealed In crashes on a choral chant severe, Heraldic of the authentic Charlemagne, Globe, sceptre, sword, to enfold, to rule, to smite, Make unity of the ma.s.s, Coherent or refractory, by his might.

Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey bra.s.s, Fame blew, and tuned the jangles, bent the knees Rebellious or submissive; his decrees Were thunder in those heavens and compelled: Such as disordered earth, eclipsed of stars, Endures for sign of Order's calm return, Whereunto she is vowed; and his wreckage-spars, His harried s.h.i.+ps, old riotous Ocean lifts alight, Subdued to splendour in his delirant churn.

Glory suffused the accordant, quelled, By magic of high sovereignty, revolt: And he, the reader of men, himself unread; The name of hope, the name of dread; Bloom of the coming years or blight; An arm to hurl the bolt With aim Olympian; bore Likeness to G.o.dhead. Whither his flashes hied Hosts fell; what he constructed held rock-fast.

So did earth's abjects deem of him that built and clove.

Torch on imagination, beams he cast, Whereat they hailed him deified: If less than an eagle-speeding Jove, than Vulcan more.

Or it might be a Vulcan-Jove, Europe for smithy, Europe's floor Lurid with sparks in evanescent showers, Loud echo-clap of hammers at all hours, Our skies the reflex of its furnace blast.

III

On him the long enchained, released For bride of the miracle day up the midway blue; She from her heavenly lover fallen to serve for feast Of rancours and raw hungers; she, the untrue, Yet pitiable, not despicable, gazed.

Fawning, her body bent, she gazed With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart: Eyes magnifying through hysteric tears This apparition, ghostly for belief; Demoniac or divine, but sole Over earth's mightiest written Chief; Earth's chosen, crowned, unchallengeable upstart: The trumpet word to awake, transform, renew; The arbiter of circ.u.mstance; High above limitations, as the spheres.

Nor ever had heroical Romance, Never ensanguined History's lengthened scroll, Shown fulminant to shoot the levin dart Terrific as this man, by whom upraised, Aggrandized and begemmed, she outstripped her peers; Like midnight's levying brazier-beacon blazed Defiant to the world, a rally for her sons, Day of the darkness; this man's mate; by him, Cannon his name, Rescued from vivisectionist and knave, Her body's dominators and her shame; By him with the rivers of ranked battalions, brave Past mortal, girt: a march of swords and guns Incessant; his proved warriors; loaded dice He flung on the crested board, where chilly Fears Behold the Reaper's ground, Death sitting grim, Awatch for his predestined ones, Mid shrieks and torrent-hooves; but these, Inebriate of his inevitable device, Hail it their hero's wood of l.u.s.trous laurel-trees, Blossom and fruit of fresh Hesperides, The boiling life-blood in their cheers.