Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 20

In fellows.h.i.+p religion has its founts: The solitary his own G.o.d reveres: Ascend no sacred Mounts Our hungers or our fears.

As only for the numbers Nature's care Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, So to Divinity the spring of prayer From brotherhood the one way upward leads.

Like the sustaining air Are both for flowers and weeds.

But he who claims in spirit to be flower, Will find them both an air that doth devour.

Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored External gifts bestowed but on the sword; Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail; See a black adversary's ghost prevail; Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win While still the conflict tore his breast within.

Out of that agony, misread for those Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased, The ghost of his black adversary rose, To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.

And long with him was wrestling ere emerged A mind to read in him the reflex shade Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged; By craven compromises hourly swayed.

Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, The man's mind opened under weight of cloud.

To penetrate the dark was it endowed; Stood day before a vision shooting wide.

Whereat the spectral enemy lost form; The traversed wilderness exposed its track.

He felt the far advance in looking back; Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.

Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire, That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire; A stranger still, religiously divined; Not yet with understanding read aright.

But when the mind, the cherishable mind, The mult.i.tude's grave shepherd, took full flight, Himself as mirror raised among his kind, He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight: Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, Had come of many a grip in mastery, Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, And of his bosom made him lord, to keep The starry roof of his unruffled frame Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.

The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, By traitor inmates baited, upward burned; Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.

To whom unwittingly did he aspire In wilderness, where bitter was his need: To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.

But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp, And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed, All choral in its fruitful garden camp, The spiritual the palpable illumed.

This gift of penetration and embrace, His prize from tidal battles lost or won, Reveals the scheme to animate his race: How that it is a warfare but begun; Unending; with no Power to interpose; No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, Heard of the Highest; never battle's close, The victory complete and victor crowned: Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed.

In manhood must he find his competence; In his clear mind the spiritual food: G.o.d being there while he his fight maintains; Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, While he rejects the suicide despair; Accepts the spur of explicable pains; Obedient to Nature, not her slave: Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows; Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave, And bids the Pa.s.sions on the Pleasures browse:- Whence Evil in a world unread before; That mystery to simple springs resolved.

His G.o.d the Known, diviner to adore, Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved.

Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face.

Back to the primal brute shall he retrace His path, doth he permit to force her chains A soft Persuader coursing through his veins, An icy Huntress stringing to the chase: What one the flash disdains; What one so gives it grace.

But is he rightly manful in her eyes, A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies, A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs, Desireing and desireable he s.h.i.+nes; As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.

Earth fills him with her juices, without fear That she will cast him drunken down the steeps.

All woman is she to this man most dear; He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps: She conscient, she sensitive, in him; With him enwound, his brave ambition hers: By him humaner made; by his keen spurs p.r.i.c.ked to race past the pride in giant limb, Her crazy adoration of big thews, Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled, Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.

This man, this hero, works not to destroy; This G.o.dlike--as the rock in ocean stands; - He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands Creative; in his edifice has joy.

How strength may serve for purity is shown When he himself can scourge to make it clean.

Withal his pitch of pride would not disown A sober world that walks the balanced mean Between its tempters, rarely overthrown: And such at times his army's march has been.

Near is he to great Nature in the thought Each changing Season intimately saith, That nought save apparition knows the death; To the G.o.d-lighted mind of man 'tis nought.

She counts not loss a word of any weight; It may befal his pa.s.sions and his greeds To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, But life gone breathless will she reinstate.

Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets.

Unresting she, unresting he, from change To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.

No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; But he, the flower at head and soil at root, Is miracle, guides he the brute to G.o.d.

And that way seems he bound; that way the road, With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, He travels, urged by some internal goad.

Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing He would become is in his mind its child; Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.

So moves he forth in faith, if he has made His mind G.o.d's temple, dedicate to truth.

Earth's nouris.h.i.+ng delights, no more gainsaid, He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.

Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; The star of sky upon his footway cast; Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's.

Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.

Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?

Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; With her the barren Huntress alternate; His rough refractory off on kicking heels To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?

May not his aspect, like her own so fair Reflexively, the central force belie, And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?

'Tis that in each recovery he preserves, Between his upper and his nether wit, Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; He less the shaken thing of l.u.s.ts and nerves; With such a grasp upon his brute as tells Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.

A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.

THE HUELESS LOVE

Unto that love must we through fire attain, Which those two held as breath of common air; The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.

Midway the road of our life's term they met, And one another knew without surprise; Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.

To them it was revealed how they had found The kindred nature and the needed mind; The mate by long conspiracy designed; The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.

Avowed in vigilant solicitude For either, what most lived within each breast They let be seen: yet every human test Demanding righteousness approved them good.

She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared Abandonment to help if heaved or sank Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, Life rosier were she but less revered.

An arm that never shook did not obscure Her woman's intuition of the bliss - Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, Across the narrow plank--he could abjure.

Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, Was all of earthly in their love untold, Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.

So has there come the gust at South-west flung By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, And one pa.s.sed out, and one the bell-head hung.

UNION IN DISSEVERANCE

Sunset worn to its last vermilion he; She that star overhead in slow descent: That white star with the front of angel she; He undone in his rays of glory spent

Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest Incomplete, were the light for which he dies, Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.

l.u.s.trous momently, near on earth she sinks; Life's full throb over breathless and abased: Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, One, more one than the bridally embraced.

SONG IN THE SONGLESS

They have no song, the sedges dry, And still they sing.

It is within my breast they sing, As I pa.s.s by.