Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 11

Few would be fed, not far his course prolong, Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.

- That rings of truth! More do your people thrive; Your Many are more merrily alive Than erewhile when I gloried in the page Of radiant singer and anointed sage.

Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil; Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!

All structures built upon a narrow s.p.a.ce Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.

O thrice must one be you, to see them s.h.i.+ft Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift; With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!

And thrice must one be you, to wait release From duress in the swamp of their increase.

At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed Philosophers behold; desponding view Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few; Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains.

Belated vessels on a rising sea, They seem: they pa.s.s!

- But not Philosophy!

- Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise Nought but the coward in us! That way lies The wisdom making pa.s.sage through our slough.

Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow; Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.

Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate.

That photosphere of our high fountain One, Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun, Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.

Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!

Advantage to the Many: that we name G.o.d's voice; have there the surety in our aim.

This thought unto my sister do I owe, And irony and satire off me throw.

They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.

Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.

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.

THE WARNING

We have seen mighty men ballooning high, And in another moment b.u.mp the ground.

He falls; and in his measurement is found To count some inches o'er the common fry.

'Twas not enough to send him climbing sky, Yet 'twas enough above his fellows crowned, Had he less panted. Let his faithful hound Bark at detractors. He may walk or lie.

Concerns it most ourselves, who with our gas - This little Isle's insatiable greed For Continents--filled to inflation burst.

So do ripe nations into squalor pa.s.s, When, driven as herds by their old private thirst, They scorn the brain's wild search for virtuous light.

OUTSIDE THE CROWD

To sit on History in an easy chair, Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom 'twas writ!

Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit, Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air.

If more than hands' and armsful be our share, s.n.a.t.c.h we for substance we see vapours flit.

Have we not heard derision infinite When old men play the youth to chase the snare?

Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes, Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent, The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex, Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent; Armed to support her sword;--lest we compose That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.

TRAFALGAR DAY

He leads: we hear our Seaman's call In the roll of battles won; For he is Britain's Admiral Till setting of her sun.

When Britain's life was in her s.h.i.+ps, He kept the sea as his own right; And saved us from more fell eclipse Than drops on day from blackest night.

Again his battle spat the flame!

Again his victory flag men saw!

At sound of Nelson's chieftain name, A deeper breath did Freedom draw.

Each trusty captain knew his part: They served as men, not marshalled kine: The pulses they of his great heart, With heads to work his main design.

Their Nelson's word, to beat the foe, And spare the fall'n, before them shone.

Good was the hour of blow for blow, And clear their course while they fought on.

Behold the Envied vanward sweep! - A day in mourning weeds adored!

Then Victory was wrought to weep; Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.

A breezeless flag above a shroud All Britain was when wind and wave, To make her, pa.s.sing human, proud, Brought his last gift from o'er the grave!

Uprose the soul of him a star On that brave day of Ocean days: It rolled the smoke from Trafalger To darken Austerlitz ablaze.

Are we the men of old, its light Will point us under every sky The path he took; and must we fight, Our Nelson be our battle-cry!

He leads: we hear our Seaman's call In the roll of battles won; For he is Britain's Admiral Till setting of her sun.

THE REVOLUTION

I

Not yet had History's Aetna smoked the skies, And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained, While overhead in ordered set and rise Her kingly crowns immutably defiled; Effulgent on funereal piled Across the vacant heavens, and distrained Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear; Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.

II

Through marching scores of winters racked she lay, Beneath a h.o.a.r-frost's brilliant crust, Whereon the jewelled flies that drained Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s disported in a glistering spray; She, the land's fount of fruits, enclosed with dust; By good and evil angels fed, sustained In part to curse, in part to pray, Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw The throbs of her charged heart before the Just, So worn the harrowed surface had become: And still they deemed the dance above was Law, Amort all pa.s.sion in a rebel dumb.

III

Then, on the unantic.i.p.ated day, Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang, Ravis.h.i.+ng as red wine in woman's form, A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh, Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned; She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray, Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang Intoxication to her swarm, Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole, As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff, Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay (O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure, If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!) And, like a glad releasing of her soul, Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue, Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined, In the face of men they joined: attest it true, The million witnesses, that she, For ages lying beside the mole, Was on the unantic.i.p.ated miracle day Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal, Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew What Lucifer of the Mint had coined His bride's adulterate currency Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate; She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate: His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed.

Read backward on the h.o.a.r-frost's brilliant crust; Beneath it read.

Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood, A radiance fringed with grim affright; For them that hungered, she was nouris.h.i.+ng food, For those who sparkled, Night.

Read in her heart, and how before the Just Her doings, her misdoings, plead.

IV

Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke To husband a resurgent France: From whom, with her dethroning stroke, Dishonour pa.s.sed; the dalliance, That is occasion's yea or nay, In issues for the soul to pay, Discarded; and the cleft 'twixt deed and word, The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird, Wherein we see old Darkness peer, Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence; And hence the talons and the beak of prey; Hence all the lures to silken swine Thronging the troughs of indolence; With every sleek convolvement serpentine; The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer, And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay.

He clasped in this revived, uprisen France, A valorous dame, of countenance The lightning's upon cloud: unlit as yet On brows and lips the lurid s.h.i.+ne Of seas in the night-wind's whirl; unstirred Her pouch of the centuries' injuries compressed; The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard: Earth's animate full flower she looked, intense For wors.h.i.+p, wholly given him, fair Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet, Earth's crystal spring to sky: Earth's warrior Best To win Heaven's Pure up that midway We vision for new ground, where sense And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare, Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray In scorn of the seductive insincere, But martially nude for hot Bellona's play, And amorous of the loftiest in her view.

V