Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 4

What say you, critic, now you have become An author and maternal?--in this trap (To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap On instruments as like as drum to drum.

You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum, So like the nose fly-teased in its noon's nap.

You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap With that between the fingers and the thumb.

It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch, Which bade our public gobble or reject.

O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked, Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!

What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere, You dealt?--the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.

CONTINUED

Oracle of the market! thence you drew The taste which stamped you guide of the inept. - A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept, A st.u.r.dy and a briny, once men knew.

He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, To roll ingurgitation till he slept, Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew.

At last this dancer to the Polar star Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, To drink the sea and pilot him to land.

O captain-critic! printed, neatly st.i.tched, Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.

MY THEME

Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt: The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.

But I have never stood at Fortune's beck: Were she and her light crew to run atilt At my poor holding little would be spilt; Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck.

Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck; He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.

Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell With other than those votaries she deals The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.

I say but that this love of Earth reveals A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.

CONTINUED

'Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts Through contemplation from a heart unbent By many tempests may be stained and rent: The summer flies it mightily attracts.

Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts, Which scarce give breathing of the sty's content For their diurnal carnal nourishment: Which treat with Nature in official pacts.

The deader body Nature could proclaim.

Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth.

But during calms the flies of idle aim Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.

ON THE DANGER OF WAR

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.

When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food.

Dark looms the issue though the cause be good, But with the doubt 'tis our old devil's trick.

O now the down-slope of the lunatic Illumine lest we redden of that brood.

For not since man in his first view of thee Ascended to the heavens giving sign Within him of deep sky and sounded sea, Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress; In peril of his blood his ears incline To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.

TO CARDINAL MANNING

I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men, Or straining for the angel of the light, Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight, When I behold one lamp that through our fen Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright From speaking to the soul of us forthright What things our craven senses keep from ken.

This is the doing of the Christ; the way He went on earth; the service above guile To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it s.h.i.+nes; Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay Such misery as by these present signs Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.

TO COLONEL CHARLES (DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)

I

An English heart, my commandant, A soldier's eye you have, awake To right and left; with looks askant On bulwarks not of adamant, Where white our Channel waters break.

II

Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness Across the ruffled strip of salt, You look, and like the prospect less.

On men and guns would you lay stress, To bid the Island's foemen halt.

III

While loud the Year is raising cry At birth to know if it must bear In history the b.l.o.o.d.y dye, An English heart, a soldier's eye, For the old country first will care.

IV

And how stands she, artillerist, Among the vapours waxing dense, With cannon charged? 'Tis hist! and hist!

And now she screws a gouty fist, And now she counts to clutch her pence.

V

With shudders chill as aconite, The couchant chewer of the cud Will start at times in p.u.s.s.y fright Before the dogs, when reads her sprite The streaks predicting streams of blood.

VI

She thinks they may mean something; thinks They may mean nothing: haply both.

Where darkness all her daylight drinks, She fain would find a leader lynx, Not too much taxing mental sloth.

VII

Cleft like the fated house in twain, One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench!