Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 14

If magic made them pliable for his use, Magician he could be by planned surprise.

For do they see the deuce in human guise, As men's acknowledged head appears the deuce, And they will toil with devilish craft and zeal.

Among them certain vagrant wits that had Ideas buzzed; they were the feebly mad; Pursuers of a film they hailed ideal; But could be dangerous fire-flies for a brain Subdued by fact, still amorous of the inane.

With a breath he blew them out, to beat their wings The way of such transfeminated things, And France had sense of vacancy in Light.

That is the soul's dead darkness, making clutch Wild hands for aid at muscles within touch; Adding to slavery's chain the stringent twist; Even when it brings close surety that aright She reads her Tyrant through his golden mist; Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound; Self-ridden, self-hunted, captive of his aim; Material grandeur's ape, the Infernal's hound; Enormous, with no infinite around; No starred deep sky, no Muse, or lame The dusty pattering pinions, The voice as through the brazen tube of Fame.

X

Hugest of engines, a much limited man, She saw the l.u.s.trous, her great lord, appear Through that smoked gla.s.s her last privation brought To point her critic eye and spur her thought: A heart but to propel Leviathan; A spirit that breathed but in earth's atmosphere.

Amid the plumed and sceptred ones Irradiatingly Jovian, The mountain tower capped by the floating cloud; A nursery screamer where dialectics ruled: Mannerless, graceless, laughterless, unlike Herself in all, yet with such power to strike, That she the various features she could scan Dared not to sum, though seeing: and befooled By power which beamed omnipotent, she bowed, Subservient as roused echo round his guns.

Invulnerable Prince of Myrmidons, He sparkled, by no sage Athene schooled.

Partly she read her riddle, stricken and pained; But irony, her spirit's tongue, restrained.

The Critic, last of vital in the proud Enslaved, when most detectively endowed, Admired how irony's venom off him ran, Like rain-drops down a statue cast in bronze: Whereby of her keen rapier disarmed, Again her chant of eulogy began, Protesting, but with slavish senses charmed.

Her warrior, chief among the valorous great In arms he was, dispelling shades of blame, With radiance palpable in fruit and weight.

Heard she reproach, his victories blared response; His victories bent the Critic to acclaim, As with fresh blows upon a ringing sconce.

Or heard she from scarred ranks of jolly growls His veterans dwarf their reverence and, like owls, Laugh in the pitch of discord, to exalt Their idol for some genial trick or fault, She, too, became his marching veteran.

Again she took her breath from them who bore His eagles through the tawny roar, And murmured at a peaceful state, That bred the t.i.tle charlatan, As missile from the mouth of hate, For one the daemon fierily filled and hurled, Cannon his name, Shattering against a barrier world; Her supreme player of man's primaeval game.

The daemon filled him, and he filled her sons; Strung them to stature over human height, As march the standards down the smoky fight; Her cherubim, her towering mastodons!

Directed vault or breach, break through Earth's toughest, seasons, elements, tame; Dash at the bulk the sharpened few; Count death the smallest of their debts: Show that the will to do Is masculine and begets!

These princes unto him the mother owed; These jewels of manhood that rich hand bestowed.

What wonder, though with wits awake To read her riddle, for these her offspring's sake; - And she, before high heaven adulteress, The lost to honour, in his glory clothed, Else naked, shamed in sight of men, self-loathed; - That she should quench her thought, nor wors.h.i.+p less Than ere she bled on sands or snows and knew The slave's alternative, to wors.h.i.+p or to rue!

XI

Bright from the sh.e.l.l of that much limited man, Her hero, like the falchion out of sheath, Like soul that quits the tumbled body, soared: And France, impulsive, nuptial with his plan, Albeit the Critic fretting her, adored Once more. Exultingly her heart went forth, Submissive to his mind and mood, The way of those pent-eyebrows North; For now was he to win the wreath Surpa.s.sing sunniest in camp or Court; Next, as the blessed harvest after years of blight, Sit, the Great Emperor, to be known the Good!

Now had the Seaman's volvent sprite, Lean from the chase that barked his contraband, A beggared applicant at every port, To strew the profitless deeps and rot beneath, Slung northward, for a hunted beast's retort On sovereign power; there his final stand, Among the perjured Scythian's s.h.a.ggy horde, The hydrocephalic aerolite Had taken; flas.h.i.+ng thence repellent teeth, Though Europe's Master Europe's Rebel banned To be earth's outcast, ocean's lord and sport.

Unmoved might seem the Master's taunted sword.

Northward his dusky legions nightly slipped, As on the map of that all-provident head; He luting Peace the while, like morning's c.o.c.k The quiet day to round the hours for bed; No pastoral shepherd sweeter to his flock.

Then Europe first beheld her t.i.tan stripped.

To what vast length of limb and mounds of thews, How trained to scale the eminences, pluck The hazards for new footing, how compel Those timely incidents by men named luck, Through forethought that defied the Fates to choose, Her grovelling admiration had not yet Imagined of the great man-miracle; And France recounted with her comic smile Duplicities of Court and Cabinet, The silky female of his male in guile, Wherewith her two-faced Master could amuse A dupe he charmed in sunny beams to bask, Before his feint for camisado struck The lightning moment of the cast-off mask.

Splendours of earth repeating heaven's at set Of sun down mountain cloud in ma.s.ses arched; Since Asia upon Europe marched, Unmatched the copious mult.i.tudes; unknown To Gallia's over-runner, Rome's inveterate foe, Such hosts; all one machine for overthrow, Coruscant from the Master's hand, compact As reasoned thoughts in the Master's head; were shown Yon lightning moment when his acme might Blazed o'er the stream that cuts the sandy tract Borussian from Sarmatia's famished flat; The century's flower; and off its pinnacled throne, Rayed servitude on Europe's ball of sight.

XII

Behind the Northern curtain-folds he pa.s.sed.

There heard hushed France her m.u.f.fled heart beat fast Against the hollow ear-drum, where she sat In expectation's darkness, until cracked The straining curtain-seams: a scaly light Was ghost above an army under shroud.

Imperious on Imperial Fact Incestuously the incredible begat.

His veterans and auxiliaries, The trained, the trustful, sanguine, proud, Princely, scarce numerable to recite, - t.i.tanic of all t.i.tan tragedies! - That Northern curtain took them, as the seas Gulp the great s.h.i.+ps to give back s.h.i.+pmen white.

Alive in marble, she conceived in soul, With barren eyes and mouth, the mother's loss; The bolt from her abandoned heaven sped; The snowy army rolling knoll on knoll Beyond horizon, under no blest Cross: By the vulture dotted and engarlanded.

Was it a necromancer lured To weave his tense betraying spell?

A t.i.tan whom our G.o.d endured Till he of his foul hungers fell, By all his craft and labour scourged?

A deluge Europe's liberated wave, Paean to sky, leapt over that vast grave.

Its shadow-points against her sacred land converged.

And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate, In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate, That tore her old credulity to strips, Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips, His withered slave for foregone miracles urged.

And he, whom now his ominous halo's round, A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned, Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear The realm of Darkness with its Prince's air; a.s.sume in mien the resolute pretence To satiate an hungered confidence, Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower Beside the generous face of that frail flower.

XIII

Desire and terror then had each of each: His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke; Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech; And both did barter under union's cloak.

An union in hot fever and fierce need Of either's aid, distrust in trust did breed.

Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits To issues. Never human fortune throve On such alliance. Viewed by fits, From Vulcan's forge a hovering Jove Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove.

Her awe of him his dread of her invoked: His nature with her s.h.i.+vering faith ran yoked.

What wisdom counselled, Policy declined; All perils dared he save the step behind.

Ahead his grand initiative becked: One spark of radiance blurred, his...o...b..was wrecked.

Stripped to the despot upstart, for success He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness.

He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught, While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance, p.r.i.c.ked for her lees the veins of wasted France; Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun The strength he taxed unripened for his throw, In vengeful casts calamitous, On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow, The luminous the ruinous.

An incalescent scorpion, And fierier for the mounded cirque That narrowed at him thick and murk, This gambler with his genius Flung lives in angry volleys, b.l.o.o.d.y lightnings, flung His fortunes to the hosts he stung, With victories clipped his eagle's wings.

By the hands that built him up was he undone: By the star aloft, which was his ram's-head will Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won; By the yeasty ferment of what once had been, To cloud a rational mind for present things; By his own force, the suicide in his mill.

Needs never G.o.d of Vengeance intervene When giants their last lesson have to learn.

Fighting against an end he could discern, The chivalry whereof he had none He called from his worn slave's abundant springs: Not deigning spousally entreat That ever blinded by his martial skill, But harsh to have her wors.h.i.+p counted out In human coin, her vital rivers drained, Her infant forests felled, commanded die The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat, Where throning he her faith in him maintained; Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat Was triumph; and what strength in her remained To head against the ultimate foreseen rout, Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will, Servant and sycophant: without ally, In Python's coils, the Master Craftsman still; The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly, The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout, The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers, Striking from black disaster starry showers.

Her supreme player of man's primaeval game, He won his harnessed victim's rapturous shout, When every move was mortal to her frame, Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie, She to exchange his laurels for earth's flowers.

The innumerable whelmed him, and he fell: A vessel in mid-ocean under storm.

Ere ceased the lullaby of his pa.s.sing bell, He sprang to sight, in human form Revealed, from no celestial aids: The shades enclosed him, and he fired the shades.

Cannon his name, Cannon his voice, he came.

The fount of miracles from drought-dust arose, Amazing even on his Imperial stage, Where marvels lightened through the alternate hours And winged o'er human earth's heroical shone.

Into the press of c.u.mulative foes, Across the friendly fields of smoke and rage, A broken structure bore his furious powers; The man no more, the Warrior Chief the same; Match for all rivals; in himself but flame Of an outworn lamp, to illumine nought anon.

Yet loud as when he first showed War's effete Their Schoolman off his eagre mounted high, And summoned to subject who dared compete, The cannon in the name Napoleon Discoursed of sulphur earth to curtained sky.

So through a tropic day a regnant sun, Where armies of a.s.sailant vapours thronged, His glory's trappings laid on them: comes night, Enwraps him in a bosom quick of heat From his anterior splendours, and shall seem Day instant, Day's own lord in the furnace gleam, The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged, When severed darkness, all flaminical bright, Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight; Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar, As wrestled he with manacles and gags, To speed across a cowering world once more, Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags.

His name on silence thundered, on the obscure Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song: Earth of her prodigy's extinction long, With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure.

Snapped was the chord that made the resonant bow, In France, abased and like a shrunken corse; Amid the weakest weak, the lowest low, From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source; Condemned to hear the nations' hostile mirth; See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth; Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force Beget the greater for its overthrow.

The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke A foreign tongue; Earth's fluttering little lyre Unlike, but like the raven's ravening croak.

Not till her breath of being could aspire Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found Our common brotherhood in sight and sound: When mellow rang the name Napoleon, And dim aloft her young Angelical waved.

Between ethereal and gross to choose, She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved.

They p.r.i.c.ked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun Behind o'ershadowing foemen: on a tide They drew the nature having need of pride Among her fellows for its vital dues: He seen like some rare treasure-galleon, Hull down, with masts against the Western hues.

FRANCE--DECEMBER 1870

I

We look for her that sunlike stood Upon the forehead of our day, An orb of nations, radiating food For body and for mind alway.

Where is the Shape of glad array; The nervous hands, the front of steel, The clarion tongue? Where is the bold proud face?

We see a vacant place; We hear an iron heel.

II