Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 34

Whereby was known that we had viewed The union of our earth and skies Renewed: nor less alive renewed Than when old bards, in nature wise, Conceived pure beauty given to eyes, And with undyingness imbued.

Pageant of man's poetic brain, His grand procession of the song, It was; the Muses and their train; Their G.o.d to lead the glittering throng: At whiles a beat of forest gong; At whiles a glimpse of Python slain.

Mostly divinest harmony, The lyre, the dance. We could believe A life in orb and brook and tree, And cloud; and still holds Memory A morning in the eyes of eve.

THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY

I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

Now ere the foreign singer thrills Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours, A herald of the million bills; And heed him not, the loss is yours.

My study, flanked with ivied fir And budded beech with dry leaves curled, Perched over yew and juniper, He neighbours, piping to his world:-

The wooded pathways dank on brown, The branches on grey cloud a web, The long green roller of the down, An image of the deluge-ebb:-

And farther, they may hear along The stream beneath the poplar row.

By fits, like welling rocks, the song Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.

But most he loves to front the vale When waves of warm South-western rains Have left our heavens clear in pale, With faintest beck of moist red veins:

Vermilion wings, by distance held To pause aflight while fleeting swift: And high aloft the pearl insh.e.l.led Her lucid glow in glow will lift;

A little south of coloured sky; Directing, gravely amorous, The human of a tender eye Through pure celestial on us:

Remote, not alien; still, not cold; Unraying yet, more pearl than star; She seems a while the vale to hold In trance, and homelier makes the far.

Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes, An orb of l.u.s.tre quits the height; And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.

His Island voice then shall you hear, Nor ever after separate From such a twilight of the year Advancing to the vernal gate.

He sings me, out of Winter's throat, The young time with the life ahead; And my young time his leaping note Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.

Imbedded in a land of greed, Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's, My care was but to soothe my need; At peace among the littleworths.

To light and song my yearning aimed; To that deep breast of song and light Which men have barrenest proclaimed; As 'tis to senses p.r.i.c.ked with fright.

So mine are these new fruitings rich The simple to the common brings; I keep the youth of souls who pitch Their joy in this old heart of things:

Who feel the Coming young as aye, Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough; Alive for life, awake to die; One voice to cheer the seedling Now.

Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, pa.s.ses: lasting too, For souls not lent in usury, The rapture of the forward view.

With that I bear my senses fraught Till what I am fast sh.o.r.eward drives.

They are the vessel of the Thought.

The vessel splits, the Thought survives.

Nought else are we when sailing brave, Save husks to raise and bid it burn.

Glimpse of its livingness will wave A light the senses can discern

Across the river of the death, Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird Of promise! bird of happy breath!

I hear, I would the City heard.

The City of the smoky fray; A prodded ox, it drags and moans: Its Morrow no man's child; its Day A vulture's morsel beaked to bones.

It strives without a mark for strife; It feasts beside a famished host: The loose restraint of wanton life, That threatened penance in the ghost!

Yet there our battle urges; there Spring heroes many: issuing thence, Names that should leave no vacant air For fresh delight in confidence.

Life was to them the bag of grain, And Death the weedy harrow's tooth.

Those warriors of the sighting brain Give worn Humanity new youth.

Our song and star are they to lead The tidal mult.i.tude and blind From b.e.s.t.i.a.l to the higher breed By fighting souls of love divined,

They scorned the ventral dream of peace, Unknown in nature. This they knew: That life begets with fair increase Beyond the flesh, if life be true.

Just reason based on valiant blood, The instinct bred afield would match To pipe thereof a swelling flood, Were men of Earth made wise in watch.

Though now the numbers count as drops An urn might bear, they father Time.

She shapes anew her dusty crops; Her quick in their own likeness climb.

Of their own force do they create; They climb to light, in her their root.

Your brutish cry at m.u.f.fled fate She smites with pangs of worse than brute.

She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears A Mother whom no cry can melt; But read her past desires and fears, The letters on her breast are spelt.

A slayer, yea, as when she pressed Her savage to the slaughter-heaps, To sacrifice she prompts her best: She reaps them as the sower reaps.

But read her thought to speed the race, And stars rush forth of blackest night: You chill not at a cold embrace To come, nor dread a dubious might.

Her double visage, double voice, In oneness rise to quench the doubt.

This breath, her gift, has only choice Of service, breathe we in or out.

Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand Led our wild steps from slimy rock To yonder sweeps of gardenland, We breathe but to be sword or block.

The sighting brain her good decree Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, By reason hourly fed, that she, To some the clod, to some the wraith,

Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.

Flame, stream, are we, in mid career From torrent source, delirious dream, To heaven-reflecting currents clear.

And why the sons of Strength have been Her cherished offspring ever; how The Spirit served by her is seen Through Law; perusing love will show.

Love born of knowledge, love that gains Vitality as Earth it mates, The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, The Life, the Death, illuminates.

For love we Earth, then serve we all; Her mystic secret then is ours: We fall, or view our treasures fall, Unclouded, as beholds her flowers

Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire.