Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 13

Unequalled since the world was man they pour A spiky girdle round her; these, her sons, His cataracts at smooth holiday, soon to roar Obstruction shattered at his will or whim: Kind to her ear as quiring Cherubim, And trampling earth like scornful mastodons.

IV

The flood that swept her to be slave Adoring, under thought of being his mate, These were, and unto the visibly unexcelled, As much of heart as abjects can she gave, Or what of heart the body bears for freight When Majesty apparent overawes; By the flash of his ascending deeds upheld, Which let not feminine pride in him have pause To question where the n.o.bler pride rebelled.

She read the hieroglyphic on his brow, Felt his firm hand to wield the giant's mace; Herself whirled upward in an eagle's claws, Past recollection of her earthly place; And if cold Reason pressed her, called him Fate; Offering abashed the servile woman's vow.

Delirium was her virtue when the look At fettered wrists and violated laws Faith in a rect.i.tude Supernal shook, Till wors.h.i.+p of him shone as her last rational state, The slave's apology for gemmed disgrace.

Far in her mind that leap from earth to the ghost Midway on high; or felt as a troubled pool; Or as a broken sleep that hunts a dream half lost, Arrested and rebuked by the common school Of daily things for truancy. She could rejoice To know with wakeful eyeb.a.l.l.s Violence Her crowned possessor, and, on every sense Inc.u.mbent, Fact, Imperial Fact, her choice, In scorn of barren visions, aims at a gla.s.sy void.

Who sprang for Liberty once, found slavery sweet; And Tyranny, on alert subservience buoyed, Spurred a blood-mare immeasureably fleet To shoot the transient leagues in a pa.s.sing wink, Prompt for the glorious bound at the fanged abyss's brink.

Scarce felt she that she bled when battle scored On riddled flags the further conjured line; From off the meteor gleam of his waved sword Reflected bright in permanence: she bled As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine With whirl o' the cup before the kiss to lip; And bade drudge History in his footprints tread, For pride of sword-strokes o'er slow penmans.h.i.+p: Each step of his a volume: his sharp word The shower of steel and lead Or pastoral suns.h.i.+ne.

V

Persistent through the brazen chorus round His thunderous footsteps on the foeman's ground, A broken carol of wild notes was heard, As when an ailing infant wails a dream.

Strange in familiarity it rang: And now along the dark blue vault might seem Winged migratories having but heaven for home, Now the lone sea-bird's cry down shocks of foam, Beneath a ruthless paw the captive's pang.

It sang the gift that comes from G.o.d To mind of man as air to lung.

So through her days of under sod Her faith unto her heart had sung, Like bedded seed by frozen clod, With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst, And midway up, Earth's fluttering little lyre.

Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire The vision of it watered thirst.

VI

But whom those errant moans accused As Liberty's murderous mother, cried accursed, France blew to deafness: for a s.p.a.ce she mused; She smoothed a startled look, and sought, From treasuries of the adoring slave, Her surest way to strangle thought; Picturing her dread lord decree advance Into the enemy's land; artillery, bayonet, lance; His ordering fingers point the dial's to time their ranks: Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest's bayonet-glaive.

Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks, By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains.

s.h.i.+nes his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains.

They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute; He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute; Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox.

From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls; From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded b.a.l.l.s: He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire s.h.i.+fting blocks; They clash, they are knotted, and now 'tis the deed of the axe on the log; Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or shreds, or a fog Rolling off sunlight's arrows. Not mightier Phoebus in ire, Nor deadlier Jove's avengeing right hand, than he of the brain Keen at an enemy's mind to encircle and pierce and constrain, m.u.f.fling his own for a fate-charged blow very G.o.ds may admire.

Sure to behold are his eagles on high where the conflict raged.

Rightly, then, should France wors.h.i.+p, and deafen the disaccord Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe. Let them submit!

She said it aloud, and heard in her breast, as a singer caged, With the beat of wings at bars, Earth's fluttering little lyre.

No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit: Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of pain Rather, the drop sheer downward from pressure of merciless weight.

Her strangled thought got breath, with her wors.h.i.+p held debate; To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed.

Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main, Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed In a flaming pillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist.

For there 'twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of sheep; Firmly there the banner he first upreared Stands to rally; and nouris.h.i.+ng grain do his children reap From a father beloved in life, in his death revered.

Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain; Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France Had view of her one-day's heavenly lover again; Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had erred, Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred; Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend, Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end.

VII

Soon felt she in her s.h.i.+vered frame A bodeful drain of blood illume Her wits with frosty fire to read The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom For victory that was victory scarce in name.

Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs O'er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize; Recalling how he stood by Frederic's tomb, With Frederic's country underfoot and spurned: There meditated; till her hope might guess, Albeit his constant star prescribe success, The savage strife would sink, the civil aim To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned; And Labour's lovely peace, and Beauty's courtly bloom, The mind in strenuous tasks hilarious.

At such great height, where hero hero topped, Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think No further leaps at the fanged abyss's brink True Genius takes: be battle's dice-box dropped!

She watched his desert features, hung to hear The honey words desired, and veiled her face; Hearing the Seaman's name recur Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place, Conjure a heart into the trebly felled.

It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van Were haunted by the amphibious curse; Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout: The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout, Distracted Europe's Master, puffed remote Those Indies of the swift Macedonian, Whereon would Europe's Master somewhiles doat, In dreamings on a docile universe Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne.

Nor marvel France should veil a seer's face, And call on darkness as a blest retreat.

Magnanimously could her iron Emperor Confront submission: hostile stirred to heat All his vast enginery, allowed no halt Up withered avenues of waste-blood war, To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume, As 'twere the world's arteries opened! Woe the race!

Ask wherefore Fortune's vile caprice should balk His panther spring across the foaming salt, From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk!

There is no answer: seed of black defeat She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom.

See since that Seaman's epicycle sprite Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white With mother's tears of France, that he may meet Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea; Earth's power to baffle Ocean's power resume; Victorious army crown o'er Victory's fleet; And bearing low that Seaman upon knee, Stay the vexed question of supremacy, Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic's tomb.

VIII

Poured streams of Europe's veins the flood Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed: And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast.

He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed.

She drank for dryness thirstily, praised his gifts.

The blooded frame a powerful draught uplifts Writhed the devotedness her voice rang wide In cries ecstatic, as of the martyr-Blest, Their spirits issuing forth of bodies racked, And crazy chuckles, with life's tears at feud; While near her heart the sunken sentinel Called Critic marked, and dumb in awe reviewed This torture, this anointed, this untracked To mortal source, this alien of his kind; Creator, slayer, conjuror, Solon-Mars, The cataract of the abyss, the star of stars; Whose arts to lay the senses under spell Aroused an insurrectionary mind.

IX

He, did he love her? France was his weapon, shrewd At edge, a wind in onset: he loved well His tempered weapon, with the which he hewed Clean to the ground impediments, or hacked, Sure of the blade that served the great man-miracle.

He raised her, robed her, gemmed her for his bride, Did but her blood in blindness given exact.

Her blood she gave, was blind to him as guide: She quivered at his word, and at his touch Was hound or steed for any mark he espied.

He loved her more than little, less than much.

The fair subservient of Imperial Fact Next to his consanguineous was placed In ranked esteem; above the diurnal meal, Vexatious carnal appet.i.tes above, Above his h.o.a.rds, while she Imperial Fact embraced, And rose but at command from under heel.

The love devolvent, the ascension love, Receptive or profuse, were fires he lacked, Whose marrow had expelled their wasteful sparks; Whose mind, the vast machine of endless haste, Took up but solids for its glowing seal.

The hungry love, that fish-like creatures feel, Impelled for prize of hooks, for prey of sharks, His night's first quarter sicklied to distaste, In warm enjoyment barely might distract.

A head that held an Europe half devoured Taste in the blood's conceit of pleasure soured.

Nought save his rounding aim, the means he plied, Death for his cause, to him could point appeal.

His mistress was the thing of uses tried.

Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed, But on his Policy his eye was lewd.

That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked No foot across; a shade his ire provoked.

The blunder or the cruelty of a deed His Policy imperative could plead.

He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he Legitimate outside his Policy.

Men's lives and works were due, from their birth's date, To the State's s.h.i.+eld and sword, himself the State.

He thought for them in ma.s.s, as t.i.tan may; For their p.r.o.nounced well-being bade obey; O'er each obstructive thicket thunderclapped, And straight their easy road to market mapped.

Watched Argus to survey the huge preserves He held or coveted; Mars was armed alert At sign of motion; yet his brows were murk, His gorge would surge, to see the butcher's work, The Reaper's field; a sensitive in nerves.

He rode not over men to do them hurt.

As one who claimed to have for paramour Earth's fairest form, he dealt the cancelling blow; Impa.s.sioned, still impersonal; to ensure Possession; free of rivals, not their foe.

The common Tyrant's frenzies, rancour, spites, He knew as little as men's claim on rights.

A kindness for old servants, early friends, Was constant in him while they served his ends; And if irascible, 'twas the moment's reek From fires diverted by some gusty freak.

His Policy the act which breeds the act Prevised, in issues accurately summed From reckonings of men's tempers, terrors, needs:- That universal army, which he leads Who builds Imperial on Imperious Fact.

Within his hot brain's hammering workshop hummed A thousand furious wheels at whirr, untired As Nature in her reproductive throes; And did they grate, he spake, and cannon fired: The cause being aye the incendiary foes Proved by prostration culpable. His dispense Of Justice made his active conscience; His pa.s.sive was of ceaseless labour formed.

So found this Tyrant sanction and repose; Humanly just, inhumanly unwarmed.

Preventive fencings with the foul intent Occult, by him observed and foiled betimes, Let fool historians chronicle as crimes.

His blows were dealt to clear the way he went: Too busy sword and mind for needless blows.

The mighty bird of sky minutest grains On ground perceived; in heaven but rays or rains; In humankind diversities of masks, For rule of men the choice of bait or goads.

The statesman steered the despot to large tasks; The despot drove the statesman on short roads.

For Order's cause he laboured, as inclined A soldier's training and his Euclid mind.

His army unto men he could present As model of the perfect instrument.

That creature, woman, was the sofa soft, When warriors their dusty armour doffed, And read their manuals for the making truce With rosy frailties framed to reproduce.

He farmed his land, distillingly alive For the utmost extract he might have and hive, Wherewith to marshal force; and in like scheme, Benign shone Hymen's torch on young love's dream.

Thus to be strong was he beneficent; A fount of earth, likewise a firmament.

The disputant in words his eye dismayed: Opinions blocked his pa.s.sage. Rent Were Councils with a gesture; brayed By hoa.r.s.e camp-phrase what argument Dared interpose to waken spleen In him whose vision grasped the unseen, Whose counsellor was the ready blade, Whose argument the cannonade.

He loathed his land's divergent parties, loth To grant them speech, they were such idle troops; The friable and the grumous, dizzards both.

Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops; Some serviceable, none credible on oath.

The silly preference they nursed to die In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie.