Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 3

III

So spake she her first utterance on the rack.

It softened torment, in the funeral hues Round wan Romance at ebb, but drove her back To listen to herself, herself accuse Harshly as Love's imperial cause allowed.

She meant to grovel, and her lover praised So high o'er the condemnatory crowd, That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed.

The picture was of hand fast joined to hand, Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged Under the threatened flash of a bright brand At arm's length up, for severing action edged.

Why, then Love's Court of Honour contemplate; And two drowned sh.o.r.ecasts, who, for the life esteemed Above their lost, invoke an advocate In Pa.s.sion's purity, thereby redeemed.

Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne, The woman stricken by an arrow falls.

His advocate she can be, not her own, If, Traitress to thy s.e.x! one sister calls.

Have we such scenes of drapery's mournfulness On Beauty's revelations, witched we plant, Over the fair shape humbled to confess, An angel's buckler, with loud choiric chant.

IV

No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard, The lady's hand in her physician's knew.

She had not hoped for them as her award, When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew Her charge of counter-motives, none impure: But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said, Her free confession was to work his cure, Show proofs for why she could not love or wed.

Were they not shown? His muteness shook in thrall Her body on the verge of that black pit Sheer from the treacherous confessional, Demanding further, while perusing it.

Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed.

She sank; she s.n.a.t.c.hed at colours; they were peel Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed.

For the dark downward then her soul did reel.

A press of hideous impulse urged to speak: A novel dread of man enchained her dumb.

She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek, Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum: Welcome to women, when, between man's laws And Nature's thirsts, they, soul from body torn, Give suck at breast to a celestial cause, Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn.

Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content, To think the cure so manifest, so frail Her charm remaining. Was the curtain's rent Too wide? he but a man of that herd male?

She saw him as that herd of the forked head b.u.t.ting the woman harrowed on her knees, Clothed only in life's last devouring red.

Confession at her fearful instant sees Judicial Silence write the devil fact In letters of the skeleton: at once, Swayed on the supplication of her act, The rabble reading, roaring to denounce, She joins. No longer colouring, with skips At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips To do the scaffold's office at his ears.

Into the bitter judgement of that herd On women, she, deeming it present, fell.

Her frenzy of abas.e.m.e.nt hugged the word They stone with, and so pile their citadel To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt.

As had he flung it, in her breast it burned.

Face and reflect it did her hot revolt From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned; Because the golden buckler was withheld, She to herself applies the powder-spark, For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled, Peris.h.i.+ng to astound the tyrant Dark.

She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain, It rang through air to sky, and rocked a world That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane; Most women! see! by the man's view dustward hurled, Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.

They sink upon their nature, the unnamed, And sops of nourishment may get some few, In place of understanding, scourged and shamed.

Barely have seasoned women understood The great Irrational, who thunders power, Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood, And courts her in the covert's dewy hour; Returning to his fortress nigh night's end, With execration of her daughters' lures.

They help him the proud fortress to defend, Nor see what front it wears, what life immures, The murder it commits; nor that its base Is s.h.i.+fty as a huckster's opening deal For bargain under smoothest market face, While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel, Justice protests that Reason is her seat; Elect Convenience, as Reason masked, Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat; Until a sentient world is overtasked, And rouses Reason's fountain-self: she calls On Nature; Nature answers: Share your guilt In common when contention cracks the walls Of the big house which not on me is built.

The Lady said as much as breath will bear; To happier sisters inconceivable: Contemptible to veterans of the fair, Who show for a convolving pearly sh.e.l.l, A treasure of the sh.o.r.e, their written book.

As much as woman's breath will bear and live Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look, That held as if for grain the summing sieve.

Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes Our homely daylight after dread of spells.

Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes Of slimy l.u.s.tres ringing elfin bells About a story of the naked flesh, Intending but to put some garment on, Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh, A traitor lurks and will be known anon.

Delusion heating p.r.i.c.ks the torpid doubt, Stationed for index down an ancient track: And ware of it was he while she poured out A broken moon on forest-waters black.

Though past the stage where midway men are skilled To scan their senses wriggling under plough, When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled, Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how, Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech, Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech, The valour of that rawness he could read.

Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran From senses up to thoughts, how she had read Maternally the warm remainder man Beneath his crust, and Nature's pity shed, In shedding dearer than heart's blood to light His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.

Therewith he could espy Confession's fright; Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks; They suck from soil, and have their urgencies Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves.

Veins of divergencies, convergencies, Our botanist in womankind perceives; And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize That splendid consummation and sure proof Of more than heart in her, who might despise, Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof To soar and be like Nature's pity: she Instinctive of what virtue in young days Had served him for his pilot-star on sea, To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue Was gifted to encourage and a.s.sure.

He gave her of the deep well she had sprung; And name it grat.i.tude, the word is poor.

But name it grat.i.tude, is aught as rare From s.e.x to s.e.x? And let it have survived Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair, Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived: Unknown to Pa.s.sion, generous for prey: Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.

Their tenderest of self did each one slay; His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce; Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak, Things living, slew they, and no artery bled.

A moment of some sacrificial smoke They pa.s.sed, and were the dearer for their dead.

He learnt how much we gain who make no claims.

A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames, Confessing; and its conjured image dire, Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed; The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force, Visioned to hold corrected and abashed Our senile emulous; which rolls its course Proud to the shattering end; with these few last Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice, Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!

And still, though having skin for man's abuse, Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath Shot skyward from a blood at pa.s.sionate jet, Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth Between the vivid lips; a va.s.sal set; And numb, of formal value. Are we true In nature, never natural thing repents; Albeit receiving punishment for due, Among the group of this world's penitents; Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.

Our world believes it stabler if the soft Are whipped to show the face repentance wears.

Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom, Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites; Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom The chasm between our pa.s.sions and our wits!

Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows, It trembles at betrayal of a sore.

Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose Impurities for clearness at the core.

She to her hungered thundering in breast, YE SHALL NOT STARVE, not feebly designates The world repressing as a life repressed, Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates.

How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian, Repents, she points for sight: and she avers, The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters.

Sin against immaturity, the sin Of ravenous excess, what deed divides Man from vitality; these bleed within; Bleed in the crippled relic that abides.

Perpetually they bleed; a limb is lost, A piece of life, the very spirit maimed.

But culprit who the law of man has crossed With Nature's dubiously within is blamed; Despite our cry at cutting of the whip, Our s.h.i.+ver in the night when numbers frown, We but bewail a broken fellows.h.i.+p, A sting, an isolation, a fall'n crown.

Abject of sinners is that sensitive, The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled Incorrigible: such t.i.tle do we give To the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled; And, taking it for Nature, place in ban Our Mother, as a Power wanton-willed, The shame and baffler of the soul of man, The recreant, reptilious. Do thou build Thy mind on her foundations in earth's bed; Behold man's mind the child of her keen rod, For teaching how the wits and pa.s.sions wed To rear that temple of the credible G.o.d; Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain, Will s.h.i.+ne, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm: Then, as a pathway through a field of grain, Man's laws appear the blind progressive worm, That moves by touch, and thrust of linking rings The which to endow with vision, lift from mud To level of their nature's aims and springs, Must those, the twain beside our vital flood, Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife (Whom the so rosy ferryman invites To junction, and mid-channel over Life, Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites) Instruct in deeper than Convenience, In higher than the harvest of a year.

Only the rooted knowledge to high sense Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur For fruitfullest advancement, eye a mark Beyond the path with grain on either hand, Help to the steering of our social Ark Over the barbarous waters unto land.

For us the double conscience and its war, The serving of two masters, false to both, Until those twain, who spring the root and are The knowledge in division, plight a troth Of equal hands: nor longer circulate A pious token for their current coin, To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate, Fair feminine and masculine shall join Upon an upper plane, still common mould, Where stamped religion and reflective pace A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold Rounds to horizon for their soul's embrace.

Then shall those n.o.blest of the earth and sun Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea.

But not till Nature's laws and man's are one, Can marriage of the man and woman be.

V

He pa.s.sed her through the sermon's dull defile.

Down under billowy vapour-gorges heaved The city and the vale and mountain-pile.

She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved.

A new land in an old beneath her lay; And forth to meet it did her spirit rush, As bride who without shame has come to say, Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush.

A natural woman's heart, not more than clad By station and bright raiment, gathers heat From nakedness in trusted hands: she had The joy of those who feel the world's heart beat, After long doubt of it as fire or ice; Because one man had helped her to breathe free; Surprised to faith in something of a price Past the old charity in chivalry:- Our first wild step to right the loaded scales Displaying women shamefully outweighed.

The wisdom of humaneness best avails For serving justice till that fraud is brayed.

Her buried body fed the life she drank.

And not another stripping of her wound!

The startled thought on black delirium sank, While with her gentle surgeon she communed, And woman's prospect of the yoke repelled.

Her buried body gave her flowers and food; The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled; Love, the large love that folds the mult.i.tude.

Soul's chast.i.ty in honesty, and this With beauty, made the dower to men refused.

And little do they know the prize they miss; Which is their happy fortune! Thus he mused

For him, the cynic in the Sage had play A hazy moment, by a breath dispersed; To think, of all alive most wedded they, Whom time disjoined! He needed her quick thirst For renovated earth: on earth she gazed, With humble aim to foot beside the wise.

Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raised Yet lowly over morning's pure grey eyes.