Poems of George Meredith, vol 1 | Page 5

bursting foam?She spread her sail and sped away,?The rolling surge her restless home,?Her incense wreaths the showering spray.
Far out, and where the riot waves?Run mingling in tumultuous throngs,?She danced above a thousand graves,?And heard a thousand briny songs.
Her mission with her manly crew,?Her flag unfurl'd, her title told,?She took the Old World to the New,?And brought the New World to the Old.
Secure of friendliest welcomings,?She swam the havens sheening fair;?Secure upon her glad white wings,?She fluttered on the ocean air.
To her no more the bastioned fort?Shot out its swarthy tongue of fire;?From bay to bay, from port to port,?Her coming was the world's desire.
And tho' the tempest lashed her oft,?And tho' the rocks had hungry teeth,?And lightnings split the masts aloft,?And thunders shook the planks beneath,
And tho' the storm, self-willed and blind,?Made tatters of her dauntless sail,?And all the wildness of the wind?Was loosed on her, she did not fail;
But gallantly she ploughed the main,?And gloriously her welcome pealed,?And grandly shone to sky and plain?The goodly bales her decks revealed;
Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes?Where blow the gusts of balm and spice,?Or where the black blockaded ribs?Are jammed 'mongst ghostly fleets of ice,
Or where upon the curling hills?Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,?Or where the hand of labour drills?The stubbornness of earth to shape;
Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,?And handicrafts and shapely wares,?And spinnings of the hermit worms,?And fruits that bloom by lions' lairs.
Come, read the meaning of the deep!?The use of winds and waters learn!?'Tis not to make the mother weep?For sons that never will return;
'Tis not to make the nations show?Contempt for all whom seas divide;?'Tis not to pamper war and woe,?Nor feed traditionary pride;
'Tis not to make the floating bulk?Mask death upon its slippery deck,?Itself in turn a shattered hulk,?A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.
It is to knit with loving lip?The interests of land to land;?To join in far-seen fellowship?The tropic and the polar strand.
It is to make that foaming Strength?Whose rebel forces wrestle still?Thro' all his boundaried breadth and length?Become a vassal to our will.
It is to make the various skies,?And all the various fruits they vaunt,?And all the dowers of earth we prize,?Subservient to our household want.
And more, for knowledge crowns the gain?Of intercourse with other souls,?And Wisdom travels not in vain?The plunging spaces of the poles.
The wild Atlantic's weltering gloom,?Earth-clasping seas of North and South,?The Baltic with its amber spume,?The Caspian with its frozen mouth;
The broad Pacific, basking bright,?And girdling lands of lustrous growth,?Vast continents and isles of light,?Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;
She visits these, traversing each;?They ripen to the common sun;?Thro' diverse forms and different speech,?The world's humanity is one.
O may her voice have power to say?How soon the wrecking discords cease,?When every wandering wave is gay?With golden argosies of peace!
Now when the ark of human fate,?Long baffled by the wayward wind,?Is drifting with its peopled freight,?Safe haven on the heights to find;
Safe haven from the drowning slime?Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath; -?To plant again the foot of Time?Upon a purer, firmer path;
'Tis now the hour to probe the ground,?To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,?The fathoms of the deep to sound,?And send abroad the missioned bird,
On strengthened wing for evermore,?Let Science, swiftly as she can,?Fly seaward on from shore to shore,?And bind the links of man to man;
And like that fair propitious Dove?Bless future fleets about to launch;?Make every freight a freight of love,?And every ship an Olive Branch.
SONG
Love within the lover's breast?Burns like Hesper in the west,?O'er the ashes of the sun,?Till the day and night are done;?Then when dawn drives up her car -?Lo! it is the morning star.
Love! thy love pours down on mine?As the sunlight on the vine,?As the snow-rill on the vale,?As the salt breeze in the sail;?As the song unto the bird,?On my lips thy name is heard.
As a dewdrop on the rose?In thy heart my passion glows,?As a skylark to the sky?Up into thy breast I fly;?As a sea-shell of the sea?Ever shall I sing of thee.
THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP
The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;?It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;?And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,?Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.?The sun's betrothing kiss it never knows,?Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;?But ever in a placid, pure repose,?More like a spirit with its look serene,?Droops its pale cheek veined thro' with infant green.
Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,?Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;?The year's own darling and the Summer's Queen!?Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.?Much of that early prophet look she shows,?Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,?As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;?Like a soft evening over sunset snows,?Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.
Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair?In all