George Meredith

“ Of rivers, cowslips cluster round, and over every hill.
The crocus and the primrose may have gone,
The snowdrop may be low,
But soon the purple glow
Of hyacinths will fill the copse, and lilies watch the dawn.
And in the sweetness of the budding year,
The cuckoo’s woodland call,
The skylark over all,
And then at eve, the nightingale, is doubly sweet and dear.
My soul is singing with the happy birds,
And all my human powers
Are blooming with the flowers,
My foot is on the fields and downs, among the flocks and herds. ”

“ There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic.
There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the kingfisher
Flashes, the fish in his beak! there the dab-chick dived, and the motion
Lazily undulates all thro’ the tall standing army of rushes.
Joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward!
Till all the lingering deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over,
And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit
Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho’ day is now buried. ”

“ In human form to fix it, or you shame
The devils with that hideous human game:—
Imagination urging appetite!
Thus fallen have earth’s greatest Gogmagogs,
Who dazzle us, whom we can not revere:
Imagination is the charioteer
That, in default of better, drives the hogs.
So, therefore, my dear Lady, let me love!
My soul is arrowy to the light in you.
You know me that I never can renew
The bond that woman broke: what would you have?
’Tis Love, or Vileness! not a choice between,
Save petrifaction! What does Pity here?
She killed a thing, and now it’s dead, ’tis dear. ”

“ And now against the hues of dawn
One level line of tillage rears;
The furrowed brow of toil and time;
To many it is but a sweep of land!
To others ’tis an Autumn trust,
But unto me a mystery;—
An influence strange and swift as dreams;
A whispering of old romance;
A temple naked to the clouds;
Or one of nature’s bosoms fresh revealed,
Heaving with adoration! there
The work of husbandry is done,
And daily bread is daily earned;
Nor seems there ought to indicate
The springs which move in me such thoughts,
But from my soul a spirit calls them up. ”

“ Darken ’mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses
Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the hay-makers
Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the mowing,
And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily; from dawn, till the gloaming
Wears its cool star, sweet and welcome to all flaming faces afield now;
Heavily weighs the hot season, and drowses the darkening foliage,
Drooping with languor; the white cloud floats, but sails not, for windless
Heaven’s blue tents it; no lark singing up in its fleecy white valleys ”

“ Against the twilight pale.
Say, then say, what is this day,
That it lingers thus with half-closed eyes,
When the sunset is quenched and the orient ray
Of the roseate moon doth rise,
Like a midnight sun o’er the skies!
’Tis the longest, the longest of all the glad year,
The longest in life and the fairest in hue,
When day and night, in bridal light,
Mingle their beings beneath the sweet blue,
And bless the balmy air! ”

“ The Sacrifice thro’ whom the ship is saved.
Haply that Sacrifice is sleeping now,
And dreams of glad tomorrows. Haply now,
His hopes are keenest, and his fervent blood
Richest with youth, and love, and fond regard!
Round him the circle of affections blooms,
And in some happy nest of home he lives,
One name oft uttering in delighted ears,
Mother! at which the heart of men are kin
With reverence and yearning. ”

“ THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed—
Renewed thro’ all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.
p. 30THE POETRY OF SHELLEY See’st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters—
Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve. ”

“ Shot thro’ the woodland alleys signals three;
And with the pressure of a sea
Plunged broad upon the vale that under lay.
Night on the rolling foliage fell:
But I, who love old hymning night,
And know the Dryad voices well,
Discerned them as their leaves took flight,
Like souls to wander after death:
Great armies in imperial dyes,
And mad to tread the air and rise,
The savage freedom of the skies
To taste before they rot. And here,
Like frail white-bodied girls in fear,
The birches swung from shrieks to sighs ”

“ In silence and twilight alone.
O nightingale! ’tis this, ’tis this
That makes thee mock the dove!
That thou hast past thy marriage bliss,
To know a parent’s love.
The waves of fern may fade and burn,
The grasses may fall, the flowers and all,
And the pine-smells o’er the oak dells
Float on their drowsy and odorous wings,
But thou wilt do nothing but coo,
Brimming the nest with thy brooding breast,
’Midst that young throng of future song,
Round whom the Future sings! ”

“ City exotics beside thee would show like bleached linen at mid-day,
Hung upon hedges of eglantine! Thou in the freedom of nature,
Full of her beauty and wisdom, gentleness, joyance, and kindness!
Come, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey of noontide;
Deep in the sweet summer meadows, border’d by hillside and river,
Lined with long trenches half-hidden, where smell of white meadow-sweet, sweetest,
Blissfully hovers—O sweetest! but pluck it not! even in the tenderest
Grasp it will lose breath and wither; like many, not made for a posy. ”

“ Breathes of their native plains, they ramp and rear,
Frothing the curb, and bounding from the earth,
As though the Sun-god’s chariot alone
Were fit to follow in their flashing track.
Anon with gathering stature to the height
Of those colossal giants, doomed long since
To torturous grief and penance, that assailed
The sky-throned courts of Zeus, and climbing, dared
For once in a world the Olympic wrath, and braved
The electric spirit which from his clenching hand
Pierces the dark-veined earth, and with a touch
Is death to mortals, fearfully they grew! ”

“ The farmer sighed: his eyes with pleasure
Brimming: ‘’Tis my daughter’s name,
My second daughter lying yonder.’
And Willie’s eye in search did wander,
And caught at once, with moist regard,
The white gleams of a grey churchyard.
‘Three weeks before my girl had gone,
And while upon her pillows propped,
She lay at eve; the weakling fawn—
For still it seems a fawn just dropt
A se’nnight—to my Nancy’s bed
I brought to make my girl a gift:
The mothers of them both were dead:
And both to bless it was my drift,
By giving each a friend; not thinking
How rapidly my girl was sinking. ”

“ For sons that never will return;
’Tis not to make the nations show
Contempt for all whom seas divide;
’Tis not to pamper war and woe,
Nor feed traditionary pride;
’Tis not to make the floating bulk
Mask death upon its slippery deck,
Itself in turn a shattered hulk,
A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.
It is to knit with loving lip
The interests of land to land;
To join in far-seen fellowship
The tropic and the polar strand.
It is to make that foaming Strength
Whose rebel forces wrestle still
Thro’ all his boundaried breadth and length
Become a vassal to our will. ”

“ To know her flesh so pure, so keen her sense,
That she does penance now for no offence,
Save against Love. The less can I forgive!
The less can I forgive, though I adore
That cruel lovely pallor which surrounds
Her footsteps; and the low vibrating sounds
That come on me, as from a magic shore.
Low are they, but most subtle to find out
The shrinking soul. Madam, ’tis understood
When women play upon their womanhood,
It means, a Season gone. ”

“ And joy, the juice of life within.
Children of earth are these; and those
The spirits of divine repose—
Death radiant o’er all human woes.
p. 87O, think what then had been thy doom,
If homeless and without a tomb
They had been left to haunt the gloom!
O, think again what now they are—
Motherly love, tho’ dim and far,
Imaged in every lustrous star.
For they, in their salvation, know
No vestige of their former woe,
While thro’ them all the heavens do flow.
Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
And watched by ever-loving eyes,
And warned by yearning sympathies. ”

“ With the invisible joy that wakes dawn o’er the green fields of England.
Summer glows warm on the meadows; then come, let us roam thro’ them gaily,
Heedless of heat, and the hot-kissing sun, and the fear of dark freckles.
Never one kiss will he give on a neck, or a lily-white forehead,
Chin, hand, or bosom uncovered, all panting, to take the chance coolness,
But full sure the fiery pressure leaves seal of espousal.
p. 82Heed him not; come, tho’ he kiss till the soft little upper-lip loses
Half its pure whiteness; just speck’d where the curve of the rosy mouth reddens. ”

“ Wed me alike thro’ day and night,
When will the stars with their linking charms
Wake us in each other’s arms?
p. 89SONG Thou to me art such a spring
As the Arab seeks at eve,
Thirsty from the shining sands;
There to bathe his face and hands,
While the sun is taking leave,
And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.
Thou to me art such a dream
As he dreams upon the grass,
While the bubbling coolness near
Makes sweet music in his ear;
And the stars that slowly pass
In solitary grandeur o’er him gleam.
Thou to me art such a dawn
As the dawn whose ruddy kiss
Wakes him to his darling steed ”

“ Can we not teach our foolish hearts to learn?
Yes! yes!—but, oh, our human rose is fair
Surpassingly! Lose calmly Love’s great bliss,
When the renewed for ever of a kiss
Whirls life within the shower of loosened hair! ”

“ Has seized my nursling new love by the throat.
p. 221XLI How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
When others pick it up becomes a gem!
We grasp at all the wealth it is to them;
And by reflected light its worth is found.
Yet for us still ’tis nothing! and that zeal
Of false appreciation quickly fades.
This truth is little known to human shades,
How rare from their own instinct ’tis to feel!
They waste the soul with spurious desire,
That is not the ripe flame upon the bough.
We two have taken up a lifeless vow
To rob a living passion: dust for fire! ”

“ Dumb harmony without. And hark! ’tis nigh!
Belief has struck the note of sound: a gleam
Of living silver shows me where she shook
Her long white fingers down the shadowy brook,
That sings her song, half waking, half in dream.
What two come here to mar this heavenly tune?
A man is one: the woman bears my name,
And honour. Their hands touch! Am I still tame? ”

“ We question; if we dare! or if we should!
And pat him, with light laugh. We have not winced.
Next, she has fallen. Fainting points the sign
To happy things in wedlock. When she wakes,
She looks the star that thro’ the cedar shakes:
Her lost moist hand clings mortally to mine.
p. 202XXII What may the woman labour to confess?
There is about her mouth a nervous twitch.
’Tis something to be told, or hidden:—which?
I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess.
She has desires of touch, as if to feel
That all the household things are things she knew. ”

“ Sweeps thro’ my being, bearing up to thee
Myself, the weight of its eternity;
Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,
It marries music with the human lyre,
Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.
p. 36REQUIEM Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
Dead tho’ a thousand hands stretch’d out to save. ”

“ True to the primal joy of dawn,
Forget its barren griefs; and aye
Like aspens in the faintest breeze
Turn all its silver sides and tremble into song.
V Now from the meadow floods the wild duck clamours,
Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight,
Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard,
And the valley mists are curling up the hills.
p. 80Three short songs gives the clear-voiced throstle,
Sweetening the twilight ere he fills the nest;
While the little bird upon the leafless branches
Tweets to its mate a tiny loving note.
Deeper the stillness hangs on every motion ”

“ For ever both at morn and eve
Men mellow distances draw near,
And shadows lengthen in the dusk,
Athwart the heavens it rolls its glimmering line!
When twilight from the dream-hued West
Sighs hush! and all the land is still ”

“ Begins to gloom, and o’er the ground
A moan of coming blasts creeps low
And rustles in the crisping grass;
Till suddenly with mighty arms
Outspread, that reach the horizon round,
The great South-West drives o’er the earth,
And loosens all his roaring robes
Behind him, over heath and moor.
He comes upon the neck of night,
p. 43Like one that leaps a fiery steed
Whose keen black haunches quivering shine
With eagerness and haste, that needs
No spur to make the dark leagues fly!
Whose eyes are meteors of speed ”

“ Yet sinner ne’er suffer’d like that little lass.
II First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
Then, her fool of a father—a blacksmith by trade—
Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart?
His heart!—where’s the leg of the poor little maid!
Well, that’s not enough; they must push her downstairs,
To make her go crooked: but why count the list?
If it’s right to suppose that our human affairs
Are all order’d by heaven—there, bang goes my fist! ”