Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 16

The sister Hours in circles linked, Daughters of men, of men the mates, Are gone on flow with the day that winked, With the night that spanned at golden gates.

Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed; They bear us grain or flower or weed, As we have sown; is nought extinct For them we fill to be our Fates.

Life of the breath is but the loan; Pa.s.sing death what we have sown.

Pearly are they till the pale inherited stain Deepens in us, and the mirrors they form on their flow Darken to feature and nature: a volumed chain, Sequent of issue, in various eddies they show.

Theirs is the Book of the River of Life, to read Leaf by leaf by reapers of long-sown seed: There doth our shoot up to light from a spiriting sane Stand as a tree whereon numberless cl.u.s.ters grow: Legible there how the heart, with its one false move Cast Eurydice pallor on all we love.

Our fervid heart has filled that Book in chief; Our fitful heart a wild reflection views; Our craving heart of pa.s.sion suckling grief Disowns the author's work it must peruse; Inconscient in its leap to wreak the deed, A round of harvests red from crimson seed, It marks the current Hours show leaf by leaf, And rails at Destiny; nor traces clues; Though sometimes it may think what novel light Will strike their faces when the mind shall write.

II

Succourful daughters of men are the rosed and starred Revolving Twelves in their fluent germinal rings, Despite the burden to chasten, abase, depose.

Fallen on France, as the sweep of scythe over sward, They breathed in her ear their voice of the crystal springs, That run from a twilight rise, from a twilight close, Through alternate beams and glooms, rejoicingly young.

Only to Earth's best loved, at the breathless turns Where Life in fold of the Shadow reclines unstrung, And a ghostly lamp of their moment's union burns, Will such pure notes from the fountain-head be sung.

Voice of Earth's very soul to the soul she would see renewed: A song that sought no tears, that laid not a touch on the breast Sobbing aswoon and, like last foxgloves' bells upon ferns In sandy alleys of woodland silence, shedding to bare.

Daughters of Earth and men, they piped of her natural brood; Her patient helpful four-feet; wings on the flit or in nest; Paws at our old-world task to scoop a defensive lair; Snouts at hunt through the scented gra.s.ses; enhavened scuts Flas.h.i.+ng escape under show of a laugh nigh the mossed burrow-mouth.

Sack-like droop bronze pears on the nailed branch-frontage of huts, To greet those wedded toilers from acres where sweat is a shower.

Snake, cicada, lizard, on lavender slopes up South, Pant for joy of a sunlight driving the fielders to bower.

Sharpened in silver by one chance breeze is the olive's grey; A royal-mantle floats, a red fritillary hies; The bee, for whom no flower of garden or wild has nay, Noises, heard if but named, so hot is the trade he plies.

Processions beneath green arches of herbage, the long colonnades; Laboured mounds that a foot or a wanton stick may subvert; Homely are they for a lowly look on bedewed gra.s.s-blades, On citied fir-droppings, on twisted wreaths of the worm in dirt.

Does nought so loosen our sight from the despot heart, to receive Balm of a sound Earth's primary heart at its active beat: The motive, yet servant, of energy; simple as morn and eve; Treasureless, fetterless; free of the bonds of a great conceit: Unwounded even by cruel blows on a body that writhes; Nor whimpering under misfortune; elusive of obstacles; prompt To quit any threatened familiar domain seen doomed by the scythes; Its day's hard business done, the score to the good accompt.

Creatures of forest and mead, Earth's essays in being, all kinds Bound by the navel-knot to the Mother, never astray, They in the ear upon ground will pour their intuitive minds, Cut man's tangles for Earth's first broad rectilinear way: Admonis.h.i.+ng loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air; Not always the sprouts of Earth's root-Laws preserving her brutes; Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in fine and fair.

Yet the like aerial growths may chance be the delicate sprays, Infant of Earth's most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal For entry on Life's upper fields: and soul thus flouris.h.i.+ng pays The martyr's penance, mark for brutish in man to heel.

Her, from a nerveless well among stagnant pools of the dry, Through her good aim at divine, shall commune with Earth remake; Fraternal unto sororial, her, where abashed she may lie, Divinest of man shall clasp; a world out of darkness awake, As it were with the Resurrection's eyelids uplifted, to see Honour in shame, in substance the spirit, in that dry fount Jets of the songful ascending silvery-bright water-tree Spout, with our Earth's unbaffled resurgent desire for the mount, Though broken at intervals, clipped, and barren in seeming it be.

For this at our nature arises rejuvenescent from Earth, However respersive the blow and nigh on infernal the fall, The chastis.e.m.e.nt drawn down on us merited: are we of worth Amid our satanic excrescences, this, for the less than a call, Will Earth reprime, man cherish; the G.o.d who is in us and round, Consenting, the G.o.d there seen. Impiety speaks despair; Religion the virtue of serving as things of the furrowy ground, Debtors for breath while breath with our fellows in service we share.

Not such of the crowned discrowned Can Earth or humanity spare; Such not the G.o.d let die.

III

Eastward of Paris morn is high; And darkness on that Eastward side The heart of France beholds: a thorn Is in her frame where s.h.i.+nes the morn: A rigid wave usurps her sky, With eagle crest and eagle-eyed To scan what wormy wrinkles hint Her forces gathering: she the thrown From station, lopped of an arm, astounded, lone, Reading late History as a foul misprint: Imperial, Angelical, At strife commingled in her frame convulsed; Shame of her broken sword, a ravening gall; Pain of the limb where once her warm blood pulsed; These tortures to distract her underneath Her whelmed Aurora's shade. But in that s.p.a.ce When lay she dumb beside her trampled wreath, Like an unburied body mid the tombs, Feeling against her heart life's bitter probe For life, she saw how children of her race, The many sober sons and daughters, plied, By cottage lamplight through the water-globe, By simmering stew-pots, by the serious looms, Afield, in factories, with the birds astir, Their nimble feet and fingers; not denied Refreshful chatter, laughter, galliard songs.

So like Earth's indestructible they were, That wrestling with its anguish rose her pride, To feel where in each breast the thought of her, On whom the circle Hours laid leaded thongs, Was constant; spoken sometimes in low tone At lip or in a fluttered look, A shortened breath: and they were her loved own; Nor ever did they waste their strength with tears, For pity of the weeper, nor rebuke, Though mainly they were charged to pay her debt, The Mother having conscience in arrears; Ready to gush the flood of vain regret, Else hearken to her weaponed children's moan Of stifled rage invoking vengeance: h.e.l.l's, If heaven should fail the counter-wave that swells In blood and brain for retribution swift.

Those helped not: wings to her soul were these who yet Could welcome day for labour, night for rest, Enrich her treasury, built of cheerful thrift, Of honest heart, beyond all miracles; And likened to Earth's humblest were Earth's best.

IV

Brooding on her deep fall, the many strings Which formed her nature set a thought on Kings, As aids that might the low-laid cripple lift; And one among them hummed devoutly leal, While pa.s.sed the sighing breeze along her breast.

Of Kings by the festive vanquishers rammed down Her gorge since fell the Chief, she knew their crown; Upon her through long seasons was its grasp, For neither soul's nor body's weal; As much bestows the robber wasp, That in the hanging apple makes a meal, And carves a face of abscess where was fruit Ripe ruddy. They would blot Her radiant leap above the slopes acute, Of summit to celestial; impute The wanton's aim to her divinest shot; Bid her walk History backward over gaps; Abhor the day of Phrygian caps; Abjure her guerdon, execrate herself; The Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Guelph, Admire repentant; reverently prostrate Her person unto the belly-G.o.d; of whom Is inward plenty and external bloom; Enough of pomp and state And carnival to quench The breast's desires of an intemperate wench, The head's ideas beyond legitimate.

She flung them: she was France: nor with far frown Her lover from the embrace of her refrained: But in her voice an interwoven wire, The exultation of her gross renown, Struck deafness at her heavens, and they waned Over a look ill-gifted to aspire.

Wherefore, as an abandonment, irate, The intemperate summoned up her trumpet days, Her treasure-galleon's wondrous freight.

The cannon-name she sang and shrieked; transferred Her soul's allegiance; o'er the Tyrant slurred, Tranced with the zeal of her first fawning gaze, To clasp his trophy flags and hail him Saint.

V

She hailed him Saint: And her Jeanne unsainted, foully sung!

The virgin who conceived a France when funeral glooms Across a land aquake with sharp disseverance hung: Conceived, and under stress of battle brought her forth; Crowned her in purification of feud and foeman's taint; Taught her to feel her blood her being, know her worth, Have joy of unity: the Jeanne bescreeched, bescoffed, Who flamed to ashes, flew up wreaths of f.a.ggot fumes; Through centuries a star in vapour-folds aloft.

For her people to hail her Saint, Were no lifting of her, Earth's gem, Earth's chosen, Earth's throb on divine: In the ranks of the starred she is one, While man has thought on our line: No lifting of her, but for them, Breath of the mountain, beam of the sun Through mist, out of swamp-fires' lures release, Youth on the forehead, the rough right way Seen to be footed: for them the heart's peace, By the mind's war won for a permanent miracle day.

Her arms below her sword-hilt crossed, The heart of that high-hallowed Jeanne Into the furnace-pit she tossed Before her body knew the flame, And sucked its essence: warmth for righteous work, An undivided power to speed her aim.

She had no self but France: the sainted man No France but self. Him warrior and clerk, Free of his iron clutch; and him her young, In whirled imagination mastodonized; And him her penmen, him her poets; all For the visioned treasure-galleon astrain; Sent zenithward on ba.s.s and treble tongue, Till solely through his glory France was prized.

She who had her Jeanne; The child of her industrious; Earth's truest, earth's pure fount from the main; And she who had her one day's mate, In the soul's view ill.u.s.trious Past blazonry, her Immaculate, Those hours of slavish Empire would recall; Thrill to the rattling anchor-chain She heard upon a day in 'I who can'; Start to the softened, tremulous bugle-blare Of that Caesarean Italian Across the storied fields of trampled grain, As to a Vercingetorix of old Gaul Blowing the rally against a Caesar's reign.

Her soul's protesting sobs she drowned to swear Fidelity unto the sainted man, Whose nimbus was her crown; and be again The foreigner in Europe, known of none, None knowing; sight to dazzle, voice to stun.

Rearward she stepped, with thirst for Europe's van; The dream she nursed a snare, The flag she bore a pall.

VI

In Nature is no rearward step allowed.

Hard on the rock Reality do we dash To be shattered, if the material dream propels.

The wors.h.i.+p to departed splendour vowed Conjured a simulacrum, wove her lash, For the slow measure timed her peal of bells.

Thereof was the cannon-name a mockery round her hills; For the will of wills, Its flaccid ape, Weak as the final echo off a giant's bawl: Napoleon for disdain, His banner steeped in c.r.a.pe.

Thereof the barrier of Alsace-Lorraine; The frozen billow crested to its fall; Dismemberment; disfigurement; Her history blotted; her proud mantle rent; And ever that one word to reperuse, With eyes behind a veil of fiery dews; Knelling the spot where Gallic soil defiled Showed her sons' valour as a frenzied child In arms of the mailed man.

Word that her mind must bear, her heart put under ban, Lest burst it: unto her eyes a ghost, Incredible though manifest: a scene Stamped with her new Saint's name: and all his host A wattled flock the foeman's dogs between!

VII

Mark where a credible ghost pulls bridle to view that bare Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its throes Beneath her Purgatorial Saint's evocative stare: Brand on his name, the gulf of his glory, his Legend's close.

A l.u.s.treless Phosphor heading for daybeam Night's dead-born, His underworld eyeb.a.l.l.s grip the cast of the land for a fray Expugnant; swift up the heights, with the Victor's instinctive scorn Of the trapped below, he rides; he beholds, and a two-fold grey, Even as the misty sun growing moon that a frost enrings, Is shroud on the shrouded; he knows him there in the helmeted ranks.

The golden eagles flap lame wings, The black double-headed are round their flanks.

He is there in midst of the pupils he harried to brains awake, trod into union; lo, These are his Epic's tutored Dardans, yon that Rhapsode's Achaeans to know.

Nor is aught of an equipollent conflict seen, nor the weaker's flashed device; Headless is offered a breast to beaks deliberate, formal, a.s.sured, precise.

Ruled by the mathematician's hand, they solve their problem, as on a slate.

This is the ground foremarked, and the day; their leader modestly hazarded date.

His helmeted ranks might be draggers of pools or reapers of plains for the warrior's guile Displayed; they haul, they rend, as in some orderly office mercantile.

And a timed artillery speaks full-mouthed on a stuttering feeble reduced to nought.

Can it be France, an army of France, tricked, netted, convulsive, all writhen caught?

Arterial blood of an army's heart outpoured the Grey Observer sees: A forest of France in thunder comes, like a landslide hurled off her Pyrenees.

Torrent and forest ramp, roll, sling on for a charge against iron, reason, Fate; It is gapped through the ma.s.s midway, bare ribs and dust ere the helmeted feel its weight.

So the blue billow white-plumed is plunged upon s.h.i.+ngle to screaming withdrawal, but s.n.a.t.c.hed, Waved is the laurel eternal yielded by Death o'er the waste of brave men outmatched.

The France of the fury was there, the thing he had wielded, whose honour was dearer than life; The Prussia despised, the harried, the trodden, was here; his pupil, the scholar in strife.

He hated to heel, in a spasm of will, From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire With head of a merlin hawk and quill Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire From a blast of eyeb.a.l.l.s hotter than speech, To say what a deadly poison stuffed The France here laid in her b.l.o.o.d.y ditch, Through the Legend pa.s.sing human puffed.

Credible ghost of the field which from him descends, Each dark anniversary day will its father return, Haling his shadow to spy where the Legend ends, That penman trumpeter's part in the wreck discern.

There, with the cup it presents at her lips, she stands, France, with her future staked on the word it may pledge.

The vengeance urged of desire a reserve countermands; The patience clasped totters hard on the precipice edge.

Lopped of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick, To curdle the milk in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s for the young they feed, At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh.

Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick Nigh death, and would in like fountains fruitlessly bleed, Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die.

Of love is wisdom. Is it great love, then wise Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto madness more By its mentor's counselling voice than thoughtfully reined.

Desire of the wave for the sh.o.r.e, Pa.s.sion for one last agony under skies, To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained

VIII