Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 19

And stabs of her delicious note, That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; In her delicious laughter part revealed; Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.

Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: Yon folded couples, pa.s.sing under shade, Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.

We dolorous complainers had a dream, Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, We saw stand bare of her celestial beam The glorious G.o.ddess, and we dared desire.

Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.

Blush of our being between birth and death: Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: Her wily semblance nought of her denies; Seems it the G.o.ddess runs, the G.o.ddess hies, The generous G.o.ddess yields. And she can arm Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.

Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.

But scorn she has for them that walk alone; Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.

The men as chief of criminals she disdains, And holds the reason in perceptive thought.

More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.

Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, In impious singles bear the th.o.r.n.y wreaths: Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.

Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn Across her garden from the insaner crew, She darkens to malignity of scorn.

A s.h.i.+ver courses through her garden-grounds: Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.

These, the irreverent of Life's design, Division between natural and divine Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest; And these because the roses flood their cheeks, Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.

With them is war; and well the G.o.ddess knows What undermines the race who mount the rose; How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.

They who her sway withstand a sea defy, At every point of juncture must be proof; Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge Her forces mixed of craft and pa.s.sion urge For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.

She, tenderness, is pitiless to them Resisting in her G.o.dhead nature's truth.

No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.

These miserably disinclined, The lamentably unembraced, Insult the Pleasures Earth designed To people and beflower the waste.

Wherefore the Pleasures pa.s.s them by: For death they live, in life they die.

Her head the G.o.ddess from them turns, As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.

She views her quivering couples unconsoled, And of her beauty mirror they become, Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.

Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, They play the music made of two: Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end: Cunninger than the numbered strings, For melodies, for harmonies, For mastered discords, and the things Not vocable, whose mysteries Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

Is it an anguish overflowing shame And the tongue's pudency confides to her, With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, Then is the G.o.ddess tenderness Maternal, and she has a sister's tones Benign to soothe intemperate distress, Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.

Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease To those of her milk-bearer votaries As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source Direct; erratic but in heart's excess; Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force; Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.

And pray they under skies less overcast, That swiftly may her star of eve descend, Her l.u.s.trous morning star fly not too fast, To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

Unfailing her reply to woman's voice In supplication instant. Is it man's, She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.

Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps To her invoked: distraction is implored.

A smile, and he is up on G.o.dlike leaps Above, with his bright G.o.ddess owned the adored.

His tales of her declare she condescends; Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.

She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.

'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse Rarely the music made of two ascends, And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.

Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends Herself to all, and yields herself to none, Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised In hot a.s.surance under shade of doubt: And numerous are the images bepraised As Beauty's Queen, should pa.s.sion head the rout.

Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.

That is her garden's precept, seen where s.h.i.+nes Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.

Daughter of light, the joyful light, She bids her couples face full East, Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.

In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; High confidence in her whose aid is lent To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.

And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, Then be it as the Laurel G.o.d he runs, Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.

Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.

For him requiring woman's arts to please Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, No race of giants! In the woman's veins Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.

Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, Aspiring blends the t.i.tan with the G.o.d; Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss; And is it needed that Love's daintier brute Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.

She is great Nature's ever intimate In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, Until perverted by her senseless male, She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.

Hence has the G.o.ddess, Nature's earliest Power, And greatest and most present, with her dower Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute For meditated guile. She laughs to hear A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, Her garden's histories tell of to all near.

Let it be said, But less upon her guile Doth she rely for her immortal smile.

Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens To push her conquests by the simplest means.

While man abjures not l.u.s.tihead, nor swerves From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.

Her s.p.a.cious garden and her garden's grant She offers in reward for handsome cheer: Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant The secret down a dewy leer Of corner eyelids into haze: Many a fair Aphrosyne Like flower-bell to honey-bee: And here they flicker round the maze Bewildering him in heart and head: And here they wear the close demure, With subtle peeps to rea.s.sure: Others parade where love has bled, And of its crimson weave their mesh: Others to snap of fingers leap, As bearing breast with love asleep.

These are her laughters in the flesh.

Or would she fit a warrior mood, She lights her seeming unsubdued, And indicates the fortress-key.

Or is it heart for heart that craves, She flecks along a run of waves The one to promise deeper sea.

Bands of her limpid primitives, Or patterned in the curious braid, Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives, For what he gives is he repaid.

Good is it if by him 'tis held He wins the fairest ever welled From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I Not fairer! and forbids him to deny, Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, Intent as tempest, wors.h.i.+pful as prayer, - And be they doves or be they asps, - Must seem to him the sovereignty fair; Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.

Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.

Doth man divide divine Necessity From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's b.r.e.a.s.t.s A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.

Of this he perishes; not she, the throned On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.

A loftier Reason out of deeper founts Earth's chosen G.o.ddess bears: by none disowned While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky; Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry, Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.

Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, When the wild sap at high tide smites Within us; or benignly clear To vision; or as the iris lights On fluctuant waters; she is ours Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen; Flus.h.i.+ng the world with odorous flowers: A soft compulsion on terrene By heavenly: and the world is hers While hunger after Beauty spurs.

So is it sung in any s.p.a.ce She fills, with laugh at shallow laws Forbidding love's devised embrace, The music Beauty from it draws.

A READING OF LIFE--THE TEST OF MANHOOD

Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks, An army issues out of wilderness, With battle plucking round its ragged flanks; Obstruction in the van; insane excess Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress Unto more s.p.a.cious, where move ordered ranks, And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.

They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone; A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.

Then was the gracious birth of man's new day; Divided from the haunted night it shone.

That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.

Another sun had risen to clasp his bride: It was another earth unto him sang.

Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?

From the Persuader came it, in those vales Whereunto she melodiously invites, Her troops of eager servitors regales?

Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead; Nor either points for us the way of flame.

From him predestined mightier it came; His task to hold them both in breast, and yield Their dues to each, and of their war be field.

The foes that in repulsion never ceased, Must he, who once has been the goodly beast Of one or other, at whose beck he ran, Constrain to make him serviceable man; Offending neither, nor the natural claim Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.

Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife To hold them fast conjoined within him still; Submissive to his will Along the road of life!

And marvel not he wavered if at whiles The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.

For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain; Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.

Delicious licence called it Nature's cry; Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh; A tread on s.h.i.+ngle timed his lame advance Flung as the die of Baccha.n.a.lian Chance, He of the troubled marching army leaned On G.o.dhead visible, on G.o.dhead screened; The radiant roseate, the curtained white; Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.

He drank of fictions, till celestial aid Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed; Sagely the generous Giver circ.u.mspect, To choose for grants the egregious, his elect; And ever that imagined succour slew The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.