Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 5

strife
To read her own and trust her down to death.
EARTH'S SECRET
Not solitarily in fields we find
Earth's secret open, though one page is
there;
Her plainest, such as children spell, and share
With bird and
beast; raised letters for the blind.
Not where the troubled passions
toss the mind,
In turbid cities, can the key be bare.
It hangs for
those who hither thither fare,
Close interthreading nature with our
kind.
They, hearing History speak, of what men were,
And have
become, are wise. The gain is great

In vision and solidity; it lives.


Yet at a thought of life apart from her,
Solidity and vision lose their
state,
For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.
INTERNAL HARMONY
Assured of worthiness we do not dread
Competitors; we rather give
them hail
And greeting in the lists where we may fail:
Must, if we
bear an aim beyond the head!
My betters are my masters: purely fed

By their sustainment I likewise shall scale
Some rocky steps
between the mount and vale;
Meanwhile the mark I have and I will
wed.
So that I draw the breath of finer air,
Station is nought, nor
footways laurel-strewn,
Nor rivals tightly belted for the race.
Good
speed to them! My place is here or there;
My pride is that among
them I have place:
And thus I keep this instrument in tune.
GRACE AND LOVE
Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she
I love fills daily, mindful but
of one:
And close behind pale morn she, like the sun
Priming our
world with light, pours, sweet to see,
Clear water in the cup, and into
me
The image of herself: and that being done,
Choice of what
blooms round her fair garden run
In climbers or in creepers or the tree

She ranges with unerring fingers fine,
To harmony so vivid that
through sight
I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold
Beyond the
senses, where such love as mine,
Such grace as hers, should the
strange Fates withhold
Their starry more from her and me, unite.
APPRECIATION
Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared,
Nor Beauty Beauty ere
young Love was born:
And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn
At
city-windows, touching eyelids bleared;
To none by her fresh
wingedness endeared;
Unwelcome unto revellers outworn.
I the last
echoes of Diana's horn
In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and

cheered.
No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul!
And more
than simple duty moved thy feet.
New colours rose in thee, from fear,
from shame,
From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll
May
men read on the heart I taught to beat:
That change in thee, if not
thyself, I claim.
THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM
Rich labour is the struggle to be wise,
While we make sure the
struggle cannot cease.
Else better were it in some bower of peace

Slothful to swing, contending with the flies.
You point at Wisdom
fixed on lofty skies,
As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece:

She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece,
Is shorn, and rubs
with follies and with lies.
So following her, your hewing may attain

The right to speak unto the mute, and shun
That sly temptation of
the illumined brain,
Deliveries oracular, self-spun.
Who sweats not
with the flock will seek in vain
To shed the words which are ripe fruit
of sun.
THE STATE OF AGE
Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg
Honours from aught
about thee. Light the young.
Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,
O
grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.
Thou art for this our life an
ancient egg,
Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue,
Turning
dead trifles, like the cock of dung,
Which runs, Time's contrast to thy
halting leg.
Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires.
But hast thou
in thy season set her fires
To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash,

Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high:
Yea, to spread
light when thy proud letter I
Drops prone and void as any thoughtless
dash.
PROGRESS
In Progress you have little faith, say you:
Men will maintain dear

interests, wreak base hates,
By force, and gentle women choose their
mates
Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew:
The human
heart Bellona's mad halloo
Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates.

'Now at this time,' says History, 'those two States
Stood ready their
past wrestling to renew.
They sharpened arms and showed them, like
the brutes
Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight
Fell on their
waxing harvests. They deferred
The bloody settlement of their
disputes
Till God should bless them better.' They did right.
And
naming Progress, both shall have the word.
THE WORLD'S ADVANCE
Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline
To brand it, for it bears
a heavy pack.
You have perchance observed the inebriate's track
At
night when he has quitted the inn-sign:
He plays diversions on the
homeward line,
Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack:
A hedge
may take him, but he turns not back,
Nor turns this burdened world,
of curving spine.
'Spiral,' the memorable Lady terms
Our mind's
ascent: our world's advance presents
That figure on a flat; the way of
worms.
Cherish the promise of its good intents,
And warn it, not