Poems of George Meredith, vol 1 | Page 6

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 that glads the
eye and charms the air;
In all that wakes emotions in the mind
And
sows sweet sympathies for human kind.
Twin-born, albeit their
seasons are apart,
They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;
Fair
symbols of the marvels of our state,
Mute speakers of the oracles of
fate!
For each, fulfilling nature's law, fulfils
Itself and its own aspirations
pure;
Living and dying; letting faith ensure
New life when deathless
Spring shall touch the hills.
Each perfect in its place; and each
content
With that perfection which its being meant:
Divided not by
months that intervene,
But linked by all the flowers that bud between.

Forever smiling thro' its season brief,
The one in glory and the one
in grief:
Forever painting to our museful sight,
How lowlihead and
loveliness unite.
Born from the first blind yearning of the earth
To be a mother and

give happy birth,
Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,
Lo,
from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;
And ere the snows have
melted from the grass,
And not a strip of greensward doth appear,

Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,
Alone, unkissed, unloved,
behold it pass!
While in the ripe enthronement of the year,

Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air
With her so sweet,
delicious bridal breath, -
Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,

And starr'd with dews upon her forehead clear,
Fresh-hearted as a
Maiden Queen should be
Who takes the land's devotion as her fee, -

The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,
Nature's most
beautiful and perfect flower.
THE DEATH OF WINTER
When April with her wild blue eye
Comes dancing over the grass,

And all the crimson buds so shy
Peep out to see her pass;
As lightly
she loosens her showery locks
And flutters her rainy wings;

Laughingly stoops
To the glass of the stream,
And loosens and
loops
Her hair by the gleam,
While all the young villagers blithe as
the flocks
Go frolicking round in rings; -
Then Winter, he who
tamed the fly,
Turns on his back and prepares to die,
For he cannot
live longer under the sky.
Down the valleys glittering green,
Down from the hills in snowy rills,

He melts between the border sheen
And leaps the flowery verges!

He cannot choose but brighten their hues,
And tho' he would creep,
he fain must leap,
For the quick Spring spirit urges.
Down the vale
and down the dale
He leaps and lights, till his moments fail,
Buried
in blossoms red and pale,
While the sweet birds sing his dirges!
O Winter! I'd live that life of thine,
With a frosty brow and an icicle
tongue,

And never a song my whole life long, -
Were such delicious
burial mine!
To die and be buried, and so remain
A wandering
brook in April's train,
Fixing my dying eyes for aye
On the dawning

brows of maiden May.
SONG
The moon is alone in the sky
As thou in my soul;
The sea takes her
image to lie
Where the white ripples roll
All night in a dream,

With the light of her beam,
Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the
shore.
The pebbles speak low
In the ebb and the flow,
As I when
thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:
Nought other stirred

Save my heart all unheard
Beating to bliss that is past evermore.
JOHN LACKLAND
A wicked man is bad enough on earth;
But O the baleful lustre of a
chief
Once pledged in tyranny! O star of dearth
Darkly illumining a
nation's grief!
How many men have worn thee on their brows!
Alas
for them and us! God's precious gift
Of gracious dispensation got by
theft -
The damning form of false unholy vows!
The thief of God
and man must have his fee:
And thou, John Lackland, despicable
prince -
Basest of England's banes before or since!
Thrice traitor,
coward, thief! O thou shalt be
The historic warning, trampled and
abhorr'd
Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!
THE SLEEPING CITY
A Princess in the eastern tale
Paced thro' a marble city pale,
And
saw in ghastly shapes of stone
The sculptured life she breathed alone;
Saw, where'er her eye might range,
Herself the only child of change;

And heard her echoed footfall chime
Between Oblivion and Time;
And in the squares where fountains played,
And up the spiral
balustrade,
Along the drowsy corridors,
Even to the inmost sleeping
floors,

Surveyed in wonder chilled with dread
The seemingness of Death,
not dead;
Life's semblance but without its storm,
And silence
frosting every form;
Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves,
Like suddenly arrested
waves
About to sink, about to rise, -
Strange meaning in their
stricken eyes;
And cloths and couches live with flame
Of leopards fierce and lions