Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 7

Are they parted, then expect Some one sailing will be wrecked: Separate hunting are they sped, Scan the morsel coveted.

Earth that Triad is: she hides Joy from him who that divides; Showers it when the three are one Gla.s.sing her in union.

Earth your haven, Earth your helm, You command a double realm; Labouring here to pay your debt, Till your little sun shall set; Leaving her the future task: Loving her too well to ask.

Eglantine that climbs the yew, She her darkest wreathes for those Knowing her the Ever-new, And themselves the kin o' the rose.

Life, the chisel, axe and sword, Wield who have her depths explored: Life, the dream, shall be their robe Large as air about the globe; Life, the question, hear its cry Echoed with concordant Why; Life, the small self-dragon ramped, Thrill for service to be stamped.

Ay, and over every height Life for them shall wave a wand: That, the last, where sits affright, Homely shows the stream beyond.

Love the light and be its lynx, You will track her and attain; Read her as no cruel Sphinx In the woods of Westermain, Daily fresh the woods are ranged; Glooms which otherwhere appal, Sounded: here, their worths exchanged Urban joins with pastoral: Little lost, save what may drop Husk-like, and the mind preserves.

Natural overgrowths they lop, Yet from nature neither swerves, Trained or savage: for this cause: Of our Earth they ply the laws, Have in Earth their feeding root, Mind of man and bent of brute.

Hear that song; both wild and ruled.

Hear it: is it wail or mirth?

Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?

None, and all: it springs of Earth.

O but hear it! 'tis the mind; Mind that with deep Earth unites, Round the solid trunk to wind Rings of clasping parasites.

Music have you there to feed Simplest and most soaring need.

Free to wind, and in desire Winding, they to her attached Feel the trunk a spring of fire, And ascend to heights unmatched, Whence the tidal world is viewed As a sea of windy wheat, Momently black, barren, rude; Golden-brown, for harvest meet, Dragon-reaped from folly-sown; Bride-like to the sickle-blade: Quick it varies, while the moan, Moan of a sad creature strayed, Chiefly is its voice. So flesh Conjures tempest-flails to thresh Good from worthless. Some clear lamps Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.

Monster is it still, and blind, Fit but to be led by Pain.

Glance we at the paths behind, Fruitful sight has Westermain.

There we laboured, and in turn Forward our blown lamps discern, As you see on the dark deep Far the loftier billows leap, Foam for beacon bear.

Hither, hither, if you will, Drink instruction, or instil, Run the woods like vernal sap, Crying, hail to luminousness!

But have care.

In yourself may lurk the trap: On conditions they caress.

Here you meet the light invoked Here is never secret cloaked.

Doubt you with the monster's fry All his...o...b..t may exclude; Are you of the stiff, the dry, Cursing the not understood; Grasp you with the monster's claws; Govern with his truncheon-saws; Hate, the shadow of a grain; You are lost in Westermain: Earthward swoops a vulture sun, Nighted upon carrion: Straightway venom wine-cups shout Toasts to One whose eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and h.e.l.lebore: Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature's maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track: Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips: Allegory drums the sconce, Impiousness nibblenips.

Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o' the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits Round you, and with them you whirl Fast where pours the fountain-rout Out of Him whose eyes are out: Mult.i.tudes on mult.i.tudes, Drenched in wallowing devilry: And you ask where you may be, In what reek of a lair Given to bones and ogre-broods: And they yell you Where.

Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN

I

Last night returning from my twilight walk I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk He reached me flowers as from a withered bough: O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

II

Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.

Another stood by me, a shape in stone, Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s of clay, And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

III

Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.

Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES

I

He who has looked upon Earth Deeper than flower and fruit, Losing some hue of his mirth, As the tree striking rock at the root, Unto him shall the marvellous tale Of Callistes more humanly come With the touch on his breast than a hail From the markets that hum.

II

Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.

'Twas the season when wintertide, In the higher rock-hollows updrawn, Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied, By light throwing shallow shade, Between the beam and the gloom, Sicilian Enna, whose Maid Such aspect wears in her bloom Underneath since the Charioteer Of Darkness whirled her away, On a reaped afternoon of the year, Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.

O and naked of her, all dust, The majestic Mother and Nurse, Ringing cries to the G.o.d, the Just, Curled the land with the blight of her curse: Recollected of this glad isle Still quaking. But now more fair, And momently fraying the while The veil of the shadows there, Soft Enna that prostrate grief Sang through, and revealed round the vines, Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf, The wheat-blades tripping in lines, A hue unillumined by sun Of the flowers flooding gra.s.s as from founts: All the penetrable dun Of the morn ere she mounts.

III

Nor had saffron and sapphire and red Waved aloft to their sisters below, When gaped by the rock-channel head Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow, Reverberant over the plain: A sound oft fearfully swung For the coming of wrathful rain: And forth, like the dragon-tongue Of a fire beaten flat by the gale, But more as the smoke to behold, A chariot burst. Then a wail Quivered high of the love that would fold Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart, Though a G.o.d's: and the wheels were stayed, And the team of the chariot swart Reared in marble, the six, dismayed, Like hoofs that by night plas.h.i.+ng sea Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave: For, lo, the Great Mother, She!

And Callistes gazed, he gave His eyeb.a.l.l.s up to the sight: The embrace of the Twain, of whom To men are their day, their night, Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb: Our Lady of the Sheaves And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet Of Enna: he saw through leaves The Mother and Daughter meet.

They stood by the chariot-wheel, Embraced, very tall, most like Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel Down their s.h.i.+vering columns and strike Head to head, crossing throats: and apart, For the feast of the look, they drew, Which Darkness no longer could thwart; And they broke together anew, Exulting to tears, flower and bud.

But the mate of the Rayless was grave: She smiled like Sleep on its flood, That washes of all we crave: Like the trance of eyes awake And the spirit enshrouded, she cast The wan underworld on the lake.

They were so, and they pa.s.sed.

IV

He tells it, who knew the law Upon mortals: he stood alive Declaring that this he saw: He could see, and survive.

V

Now the youth was not ware of the beams With the gra.s.ses intertwined, For each thing seen, as in dreams, Came stepping to rear through his mind, Till it struck his remembered prayer To be witness of this which had flown Like a smoke melted thinner than air, That the vacancy doth disown.

And viewing a maiden, he thought It might now be morn, and afar Within him the memory wrought Of a something that slipped from the car When those, the august, moved by: Perchance a scarf, and perchance This maiden. She did not fly, Nor started at his advance: She looked, as when infinite thirst Pants pausing to bless the springs, Refreshed, unsated. Then first He trembled with awe of the things He had seen; and he did transfer, Divining and doubting in turn, His reverence unto her; Nor asked what he crouched to learn: The whence of her, whither, and why Her presence there, and her name, Her parentage: under which sky Her birth, and how hither she came, So young, a virgin, alone, Unfriended, having no fear, As Oreads have; no moan, Like the lost upon earth; no tear; Not a sign of the torch in the blood, Though her stature had reached the height When mantles a tender rud In maids that of youths have sight, If maids of our seed they be: For he said: A glad vision art thou!

And she answered him: Thou to me!

As men utter a vow.

VI

Then said she, quick as the cries Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!

And Helios rose in her eyes, That were full as the dew-b.a.l.l.s bright, Relucent to him as dews Unshaded. Breathing, she sent Her voice to the G.o.d of the Muse, And along the vale it went, Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill: Sweet, but no young maid's throat: The echo beyond the hill Ran falling on half the note: And under the shaken ground Where the Hundred-headed groans By the roots of great AEtna bound, As of him were hollow tones Of wondering roared: a tale Repeated to sunless halls.

But now off the face of the vale Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls Of the lake's rock-head were gold, And the breast of the lake, that swell Of the crestless long wave rolled To sh.o.r.e-bubble, pebble and sh.e.l.l.

A morning of radiant lids O'er the dance of the earth opened wide: The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: There was milk, honey, music to make: Up their branches the little birds billed: Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.

O s.h.i.+ning in sunlight, chief After water and water's caress, Was the young bronze-orange leaf, That clung to the tree as a tress, Shooting lucid tendrils to wed With the vine-hook tree or pole, Like Arachne launched out on her thread.

Then the maiden her dusky stole In the span of the black-starred zone, Gathered up for her footing fleet.

As one that had toil of her own She followed the lines of wheat Tripping straight through the fields, green blades, To the groves of olive grey, Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray In a night, like the snow-packed storm: Pear, apple, almond, plum: Not wintry now: pus.h.i.+ng, warm!

And she touched them with finger and thumb, As the vine-hook closes: she smiled, Recounting again and again, Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child, With the meaning known to men.

For hours in the track of the plough And the pruning-knife she stepped, And of how the seed works, and of how Yields the soil, she seemed adept.

Then she murmured that name of the dearth, The Beneficent, Hers, who bade Our husbandmen sow for the birth Of the grain making earth full glad.

She murmured that Other's: the dirge Of life-light: for whose dark lap Our locks are clipped on the verge Of the realm where runs no sap.

She said: We have looked on both!

And her eyes had a wavering beam Of various lights, like the froth Of the storm-swollen ravine stream In flame of the bolt. What links Were these which had made him her friend?

He eyed her, as one who drinks, And would drink to the end.

VII