Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 4

sometimes by prodigious qualms
(Nightmares of bankruptcy
and death), -
Showers down in lumps a load of alms,
Then pants as
one who has lost a breath;
XXVII
Believes high heaven, whence favours flow,
Too kind to ask a
sacrifice
For what it specially doth bestow; -
Gives SHE, 'tis
generous, cheese to mice.
XXVIII
She saw the young Dominion strip
For battle with a grievous wrong,

And curled a noble Norman lip,
And looked with half an eye

sidelong;
XXIX
And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,
Denounced the waste of blood
and coin,
Implored the combatants, with tears,
Never to think they
could rejoin.
XXX
Oh! was it England that, alas!
Turned sharp the victor to cajole?

Behold her features in the glass:
A monstrous semblance mocks her
soul!
XXXI
A false majority, by stealth,
Have got her fast, and sway the rod:
A
headless tyrant built of wealth,
The hypocrite, the belly-God.
XXXII
To him the daily hymns they raise:
His tastes are sought: his will is
done:
He sniffs the putrid steam of praise,
Place for true England
here is none!
XXXIII
But can a distant race discern
The difference 'twixt her and him?

My friend, that will you bid them learn.
He shames and binds her,
head and limb.
XXXIV
Old wood has blossoms of this sort.
Though sound at core, she is old
wood.
If freemen hate her, one retort
She has; but one!--'You are
my blood.'

XXXV
A poet, half a prophet, rose
In recent days, and called for power.
I
love him; but his mountain prose -
His Alp and valley and wild
flower -
XXXVI
Proclaimed our weakness, not its source.
What medicine for disease
had he?
Whom summoned for a show of force?
Our titular
aristocracy!
XXXVII
Why, these are great at City feasts;
From City riches mainly rise:

'Tis well to hear them, when the beasts
That die for us they eulogize!
XXXVIII
But these, of all the liveried crew
Obeisant in Mammon's walk,

Most deferent ply the facial screw,
The spinal bend, submissive talk.
XXXIX
Small fear that they will run to books
(At least the better form of
seed)!
I, too, have hoped from their good looks,
And fables of their
Northman breed; -
XL
Have hoped that they the land would head
In acts magnanimous; but,
lo,
When fainting heroes beg for bread
They frown: where they are
driven they go.
XLI
Good health, my friend! and may your lot
Be cheerful o'er the

Western rounds.
This butter-woman's market-trot
Of verse is
passing market-bounds.
XLII
Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone.
On banks of fog faint lines extend:

Adieu! bring back a braver dawn
To England, and to me my friend.
November 15th, 1867.
TIME AND SENTIMENT
I see a fair young couple in a wood,
And as they go, one bends to take
a flower,
That so may be embalmed their happy hour,
And in
another day, a kindred mood,
Haply together, or in solitude,

Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,
The joy, the bloom, and
the illusive power,
Wherewith by their young blood they are endued

To move all enviable, framed in May,
And of an aspect sisterly
with Truth:
Yet seek they with Time's laughing things to wed:
Who
will be prompted on some pallid day
To lift the hueless flower and
show that dead,
Even such, and by this token, is their youth.
LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion
swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,

Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit
of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,

Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet
shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his
scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a
middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he
looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,

The army of unalterable law.

THE STAR SIRIUS
Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales
To dotlings under moonlight still
art keen
With cheerful fervour of a warrior's mien
Who holds in his
great heart the battle-scales:
Unquenched of flame though swift the
flood assails,
Reducing many lustrous to the lean:
Be thou my star,
and thou in me be seen
To show what source divine is, and prevails.

Long watches through, at one with godly night,
I mark thee
planting joy in constant fire;
And thy quick beams, whose jets of life
inspire
Life to the spirit, passion for the light,
Dark Earth since first
she lost her lord from sight
Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a
lyre.
SENSE AND SPIRIT
The senses loving Earth or well or ill
Ravel yet more the riddle of our
lot.
The mind is in their trammels, and lights not
By trimming
fear-bred tales; nor does the will
To find in nature things which less
may chill
An ardour that desires, unknowing what.
Till we conceive
her living we go distraught,
At best but circle-windsails of a mill.

Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life
Creatively has given us blood
and breath
For endless war and never wound unhealed,
The gloomy
Wherefore of our battle-field
Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her
through