Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 18

To Thee, dear G.o.d of Mercy, both appeal, Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st; And that black spot in each embattled host, Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.

Now is it red artillery and white steel; Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.

So in all times of man's descent insane To brute, did strength and craft combining strike, Even as a G.o.d of Armies, his fell blow.

But at the close he entered Thy domain, Dear G.o.d of Mercy, and if lion-like He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.

A GARDEN IDYL

With sagest craft Arachne worked Her web, and at a corner lurked, Awaiting what should plump her soon, To case it in the death-coc.o.o.n.

Sagaciously her home she chose For visits that would never close; Inside my chalet-porch her feast Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.

The finished structure, bar on bar, Had s.n.a.t.c.hed from light to form a star, And struck on sight, when quick with dews, Like music of the very Muse.

Great artists pa.s.s our single sense; We hear in seeing, strung to tense; Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, To think such beauty means a trap.

But Nature's genius, even man's At best, is practical in plans; Subservient to the needy thought, However rare the weapon wrought.

As long as Nature holds it good To urge her creatures' quest for food Will beauty stamp the just intent Of weapons upon service bent.

For beauty is a flower of roots Embedded lower than our boots; Out of the primal strata springs, And shows for crown of useful things

Arachne's dream of prey to size Aspired; so she could nigh despise The puny specks the breezes round Supplied, and let them shake unwound; a.s.sured of her fat fly to come; Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; Who takes the fatal odds in fight, And gives repast an appet.i.te, By plunging, whizzing, till his wings Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, A shrouded lump, for her to see Her banquet in her victory.

This matron of the unnumbered threads, One day of dandelions' heads Distributing their gray perruques Up every gust, I watched with looks Discreet beside the chalet-door; And gracefully a light wind bore, Direct upon my webster's wall, A monster in the form of ball; The mildest captive ever snared, That neither struggled nor despaired, On half the net invading hung, And plain as in her mother tongue, While low the weaver cursed her lures, Remarked, "You have me; I am yours."

Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, Her dream of size she saw, agape.

Midway the vast round-raying beard A desiccated midge appeared; Whose body p.r.i.c.ked the name of meal, Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal; Provocative of dread and wrath, Contempt and horror, in one froth, Inextricable, insensible, His poison presence there would dwell, Declaring him her dream fulfilled, A catch to compliment the skilled; And she reduced to beaky skin, Disgraceful among kith and kin

Against her corner, humped and aged, Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, Beyond disgust or hope in guile.

Ridiculously volatile He seemed to her last spark of mind; And that in pallid ash declined Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, Wherein throughout her frame she felt That he, the light wind's libertine, Without a scoff, without a grin, And mannered like the courtly few, Who merely danced when light winds blew, Impervious to beak and claws, Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; Of whom, as actors in old scenes, Had grannam weavers warned their weans, With word, that less than feather-weight, He smote the web like bolt of Fate.

This muted drama, hour by hour, I watched amid a world in flower, Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid Their gray-blue o'er the gra.s.s's blade, And still along the garden-run The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.

Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance Her visitor performed a dance; She puckered thinner; he the same As when on that light wind he came.

Next day was told what deeds of night Were done; the web had vanished quite; With it the strange opposing pair; And listless waved on vacant air, For her adieu to heart's content, A solitary filament.

A READING OF LIFE--THE VITAL CHOICE

I

Or shall we run with Artemis Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?

Both are mighty; Both give bliss; Each can torture if divided; Each claims wors.h.i.+p undivided, In her wake would have us wallow.

II

Youth must offer on bent knees Homage unto one or other; Earth, the mother, This decrees; And unto the pallid Scyther Either points us shun we either Shun or too devoutly follow.

A READING OF LIFE--WITH THE HUNTRESS

Through the water-eye of night, Midway between eve and dawn, See the chase, the rout, the flight In deep forest; oread, faun, Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; Ravenous all the line for speed.

See yon wavy sparkle beck Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead.

Down her course a serpent star Coils and shatters at her heels; Peals the horn exulting, peals Plaintive, is it near or far.

Huntress, arrowy to pursue, In and out of woody glen, Under cliffs that tear the blue, Over torrent, over fen, She and forest, where she skims Feathery, darken and relume: Those are her white-lightning limbs Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.

Mountains hear her and call back, Shrewd with night: a frosty wail Distant: her the emerald vale Folds, and wonders in her track.

Now her retinue is lean, Many rearward; streams the chase Eager forth of covert; seen One hot tide the rapturous race.

Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, Up on a flash the lighted mound Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft Strung to barb with archer's craft, Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.

Fearful swiftness they outrun, s.h.a.ggy wildness, grey or dun, Challenge, charge of tusks elude: Theirs the dance to tame the rude; Beast, and beast in manhood tame, Follow we their silver flame.

Pride of flesh from bondage free, Reaping vigour of its waste, Marks her servitors, and she Sanctifies the unembraced.

Nought of perilous she reeks; Valour clothes her open breast; Sweet beyond the thrill of s.e.x; Hallowed by the s.e.x confessed.

Huntress arrowy to pursue, Colder she than sunless dew, She, that breath of upper air; Ay, but never lyrist sang, Draught of Bacchus never sprang Blood the bliss of G.o.ds to share, High o'er sweep of eagle wings, Like the run with her, when rings Clear her rally, and her dart, In the forest's cavern heart, Tells of her victorious aim.

Then is pause and chatter, cheer, Laughter at some satyr lame, Looks upon the fallen deer, Measuring his n.o.ble crest; Here a favourite in her train, Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; All applauded. Shall she reign Wors.h.i.+pped? O to be with her there!

She, that breath of nimble air, Lifts the breast to giant power.

Maid and man, and man and maid, Who each other would devour Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, There are comrades, led by her, Maid-preserver, man-maker.

A READING OF LIFE--WITH THE PERSUADER

Who murmurs, hither, hither: who Where nought is audible so fills the ear?

Where nought is visible can make appear A veil with eyes that waver through, Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come, Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire To clasp and strike a slackened lyre, Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, Flame in a crystal vessel sails Beneath a dome of jewelled spray, For land that drops the rosy day On nights of throbbing nightingales.

Landward did the wonder flit, Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it.

We saw the heavens fling down their rose; On rapturous waves we saw her glide; The pearly sea-sh.e.l.l half enclose; The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more Behold than tracks along a startled sh.o.r.e, With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, The very she called forth by ripened blood For its next breath of being, murmurs; she, Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, The stream within us urged to flood; Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, Maid, woman and divinity; Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit Untasted; she our written fate Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root: Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; The evanescent, ever-present she, Great Nature's stern necessity In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.

The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.

Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, Her form is given to pardoned sight, And lets our mortal eyes receive The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; Adored by them who solitarily pace, In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, The paths among the meadow asphodel, Remembering. Never there her face Is planetary; reddens to sh.o.r.e sea-sh.e.l.l Around such whiteness the enamoured air Of noon that clothes her, never there.

Daughter of light, the joyful light, She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, Sweet in her disregard of aid Divine to conquer or persuade.

A fountain jets from moss; a flower Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.

By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen With eyelids unabashed the pa.s.sion's Queen.

Shorn of attendant Graces she can use Her natural snares to make her will supreme.

A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: One arm at curve along a rounded thigh; Her firm new b.r.e.a.s.t.s each pointing its own way A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.

The bud of fresh virginity awaits The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: She touches on the hour of happy mates; Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

And while commanding blissful sight believe It holds her as a body strained to breast, Down on the underworld's perpetual eve She plunges the possessor dispossessed; And bids believe that image, heaving warm, Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame; The phantom any breeze blows out of form; A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.

The rapture shed the torture weaves; The direst blow on human heart she deals: The pain to know the seen deceives; Nought true but what insufferably feels.