Poems of George Meredith, vol 1 | Page 8

sky.
The voice of great
Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions, Yet earnest and simple as
any sweet child of the green lowly vale.
THE POETRY OF KEATS
The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley,
Low-lidded
with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound, Tranced with a
tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
That wins immortality
even while panting delirious with death.
VIOLETS
Violets, shy violets!
How many hearts with you compare!
Who
hide themselves in thickest green,
And thence, unseen,
Ravish the
enraptured air
With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!
Violets, shy violets!
Human hearts to me shall be
Viewless violets
in the grass,
And as I pass,
Odours and sweet imagery
Will wait
on mine and gladden me!
ANGELIC LOVE
Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips
To meet its earthly mate;

Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse
Can dare to join its fate

With one beloved devoted human heart,
And share with it the passion
and the smart,
The undying bliss
Of its most fleeting kiss;
The
fading grace
Of its most sweet embrace:-
Angelic love, heroic love!

Whose birth can only be above,
Whose wandering must be on earth,

Whose haven where it first had birth!
Love that can part with all
but its own worth,
And joy in every sacrifice
That beautifies its

Paradise!
And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,
With earnest
tenderness itself consign,
And creeping up deliriously entwine
Its
dear delicious arms
Round the beloved being!
With fair unfolded
charms,
All-trusting, and all-seeing, -
Grape-laden with full
bunches of young wine!
While to the panting heart's dry yearning
drouth
Buds the rich dewy mouth -
Tenderly uplifted,
Like two
rose-leaves drifted
Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!

Such love, such love is thine,
Such heart is mine,
O thou of mortal
visions most divine!
TWILIGHT MUSIC
Know you the low pervading breeze
That softly sings
In the
trembling leaves of twilight trees,
As if the wind were dreaming on
its wings?
And have you marked their still degrees
Of ebbing
melody, like the strings
Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand
In
some strange glimmering land,
'Mid gushing springs,
And
glistenings
Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
And have you
marked in that still time
The chariots of those shining cars
Brighten
upon the hushing dark,
And bent to hark
That Voice, amid the
poplar and the lime,
Pause in the dilating lustre
Of the spheral
cluster;
Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
As dreams of heaven
to souls that sleep!
And felt, despite earth's jarring wars,
When day
is done
And dead the sun,
Still a voice divine can sing,

Still is
there sympathy can bring
A whisper from the stars!
Ah, with this
sentience quickly will you know
How like a tree I tremble to the
tones
Of your sweet voice!
How keenly I rejoice
When in me
with sweet motions slow
The spiritual music ebbs and moans -

Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,
Dies in the light of its own
paradise, -
Dies, and relives eternal from its death,
Immortal
melodies in each deep breath;
Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to
thee
Myself, the weight of its eternity;
Till, nerved to life from its
ordeal fire,
It marries music with the human lyre,
Blending divine
delight with loveliest desire.

REQUIEM
Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is
silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and
where sleep hath no dream, In patience and peace thou art gone--to thy
grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
Dead
tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.
Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
How could it be
otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading

At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but
still, still remaining.
Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!
The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
The world and
its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of
relation,
All--all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may
not listen, the eye may not glisten,
Nevermore waked by a smile or a
sigh.
The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
And thou art alone in
thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love broken,

No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower
that is drowned in the shower,
Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the
earth.
THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS
Take thy lute and sing
By the ruined castle walls,
Where the
torrent-foam falls,
And long weeds wave:
Take thy lute and sing,

O'er the grey ancestral grave!
Daughter of a King,
Tune thy string.
Sing of happy hours,
In the roar of rushing time;
Till all the echoes
chime
To the days gone by;
Sing of passing hours
To the
ever-present sky; -
Weep--and let the showers
Wake thy flowers.

Sing of glories gone:-
No more the blazoned fold
From the banner
is unrolled;
The gold sun is set.
Sing his glory gone,
For thy voice
may charm him yet;
Daughter of the dawn,
He is gone!
Pour forth all thy grief!
Passionately sweep the chords,
Wed them
quivering to thy words;
Wild words of wail!
Shed thy withered
grief -
But hold not Autumn to thy bale;
The eddy of the leaf

Must be brief!
Sing up to the night:
Hard it