George Meredith

“ Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,
If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,
To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:
None save they but the souls which them contain.
No extramural God, the God within
Alone gives aid to city charged with sin. ”

“ Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict,
Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia
Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death-stroke.
Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,
Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against thee.
Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects ”

“ Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.
p. 102To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,
He is the vast Insensate who devours
His golden promise over leagues of seed,
Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.
The races which on barbarous force begin,
Inherit onward of their origin,
And cancelled blessings will the current length
Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.
’Tis not in men to recognize the need
Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.
Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;
Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind. ”

“ Earth’s nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,
p. 41He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.
Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
The star of sky upon his footway cast;
Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,
The body’s love and mind’s, whereof the soul’s.
Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,
To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. ”

“ Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.
Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,
Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;
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. ”

“ Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:
Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
The generous Goddess 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,
p. 15And holds the reason in perceptive thought. ”

“ An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.
More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
The very she called forth by ripened blood
For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
The stream within us urged to flood;
p. 10Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O she,
Maid, woman and divinity;
Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit
Untasted; she our written fate
Unread; Life’s flowering, Life’s root:
Unread, divined; unseen, beheld ”

“ Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
Resisting in her godhead nature’s truth.
No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
p. 17Their 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 pass them by:
For death they live, in life they die. ”

“ 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 breasts
A sword is driven ”

“ 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 assurance under shade of doubt:
And numerous are the images bepraised
As Beauty’s Queen, should passion head the rout.
p. 21Be sure the ruddy hue is Love’s: to woo
Love’s Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. ”

“ On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,
From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
Her ready secret: the abounding life
Returned for valiant labour: she and they
Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.
Exchange of powers of this conflict came ”

“ The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use
Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;
Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,
And pass despised; “a-cold for lack of heat,”
Like other corpses, but without death’s plea.
—My sister calls for battle; is it she?
p. 92—Rather a world of pressing men in arms,
Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms
Each drowsy malady and coiling vice
With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!
No home is here for peace while evil breeds,
While error governs, none ”

“ Of whence we spring and what we are.
p. 69HAWARDEN When comes the lighted day for men to read
Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands
Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,
Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands
Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;
Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. ”

“ To strengthen our foundations is the task
Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,
Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves
The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.
My sister sees no round beyond her mood;
To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood. ”

“ These, the irreverent of Life’s design,
Division between natural and divine
Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
p. 16In 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 Goddess knows
What undermines the race who mount the rose ”

“ Life’s full throb over breathless and abased:
Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,
One, more one than the bridally embraced.
p. 65THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
Else in a giant’s grasp until the end
A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.
p. 66THE MAIN REGRET WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM
I Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.
They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician ”

“ Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, noughtworth!
Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest,
My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. ”

“ Save browsing—the concrete indifferent!
Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:
They fear not for the race when full the trough.
They have much fear of giving up the ghost;
And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. ”

“ Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-grief?
p. 125’Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere
Aught over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath and has movement. ”

“ I listen at their breasts: is there no jar
p. 91Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,
And such a picture as the piercing mind
Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned
Are my true pupils while the world is brute.
What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,
Stronger impels the motion of my heart. ”

“ Who never yet of scattered lamps was born
To speed a world, a marching world to warn,
But sunward from the vivid Many springs,
Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.
p. 109FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES Iliad, B. I. V. 149
“Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,
Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,
Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen? ”

“ Of humble human being, held the ground.
p. 73VI Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow
The feet sustained by track of feet pursued
Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood
By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.
VII Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight,
And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode.
They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;
Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight. ”

“ Was Life, and author, hero, we.
p. 59The chapters holding peaks to scale,
Or depths to fathom, made our glee;
For we were armed of inner fires,
Unbled in us the ripe desires;
And passion rolled a quiet sea,
Whereon was Love the phantom sail.
p. 60THE HUELESS LOVE Unto that love must we through fire attain,
Which those two held as breath of common air ”

“ Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.
Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,
p. 124Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;
Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car,
Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant
Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids,
Mourning their charioteer ”

“ Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops,
Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women.”
p. 121HYPNOS ON IDA Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283
They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland.
There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether. ”