Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 6

one instinct to efface
Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.
A CERTAIN PEOPLE
As Puritans they prominently wax,
And none more kindly gives and
takes hard knocks.
Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,

They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.
But naughtiness,
with hoggery, not lacks
When Peace another door in them unlocks,

Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox
Grown dully
apprehensive of an Axe.
Graceless they are when gone to
frivolousness,
Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut.
They
need their pious exercises less
Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair
belief

That these are devilish only to their thief,
Charged with an
Axe nigh on the occiput.

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS
That Garden of sedate Philosophy
Once flourished, fenced from
passion and mishap,
A shining spot upon a shaggy map;
Where
mind and body, in fair junction free,
Luted their joyful concord; like
the tree
From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.
Clear Wisdom
found in tended Nature's lap
Of gentlemen the happy nursery.
That
Garden would on light supremest verge,
Were the long drawing of an
equal breath
Healthful for Wisdom's head, her heart, her aims.
Our
world which for its Babels wants a scourge,
And for its wilds a
husbandman, acclaims
The crucifix that came of Nazareth.
A LATER ALEXANDRIAN
An inspiration caught from dubious hues
Filled him, and mystic
wrynesses he chased;
For they lead farther than the single-faced,

Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.
The moon of cloud
discoloured was his Muse,
His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.

Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced,
And Beauty where she
walked blood-shot the dews.
Men railed at such a singer; women
thrilled
Responsively: he sang not Nature's own
Divinest, but his
lyric had a tone,
As 'twere a forest-echo of her voice:
What barrenly
they yearn for seemed distilled
From what they dread, who do
through tears rejoice.
AN ORSON OF THE MUSE
Her son, albeit the Muse's livery
And measured courtly paces rouse
his taunts,
Naked and hairy in his savage haunts,
To Nature only
will he bend the knee;
Spouting the founts of her distillery
Like
rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants
Being Nature's, civil
limitation daunts
His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.

Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,
The Muse will
hearken to with graver ear
Than many of her train can waken: him



Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear
Must sink
beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,
If in no vessel built for sea
they swim.
THE POINT OF TASTE
Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!
You to reviewers are as ball to bat.

They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat
With Shakespeare:
bludgeons brainingly sublime
On you the excommunicates of Rhyme,

Because you sing not in the living Fat.
The wiry whizz of an
intrusive gnat
Is verse that shuns their self-producing time.
Sound
them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,
Or watches ticking
temporal at their fobs,
You win their pleased attention. But, bright
God
O' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!
Rather for us a
tavern-catch, and bump
Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles
hobnobs.
CAMELUS SALTAT
What say you, critic, now you have become
An author and
maternal?--in this trap
(To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap

On instruments as like as drum to drum.
You snarled tut-tut for
welcome to tum-tum,
So like the nose fly-teased in its noon's nap.

You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap
With that between
the fingers and the thumb.
It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch,

Which bade our public gobble or reject.
O spectacle of Peter,
shrewdly pecked,
Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!
What
of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere,
You dealt?--the voice austere,
the jeer, the sneer.
CONTINUED
Oracle of the market! thence you drew
The taste which stamped you
guide of the inept. -
A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept,
A sturdy
and a briny, once men knew.
He loved small beer, and for that

copious brew,
To roll ingurgitation till he slept,
Rations exchanged
with flavour for the adept:
And merrily plied him captain, mate and
crew.
At last this dancer to the Polar star
Sank, washed out within,
and overboard was pitched,
To drink the sea and pilot him to land.

O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched,
Know while the pillory-eggs
fly fast, they are
Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.
MY THEME
Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt:
The song of gladness
one straight bolt can check.
But I have never stood at Fortune's beck:

Were she and her light crew to run atilt
At my poor holding little
would be spilt;
Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck.

Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck;
He grasps a blade,
not always by the hilt.
Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell

With other than those votaries she deals
The black or brilliant from
her thunder-rift.
I say but that this love of Earth reveals
A soul
beside our own to quicken, quell,
Irradiate, and through ruinous
floods uplift.
CONTINUED
'Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts
Through contemplation
from a heart unbent
By many tempests may be stained and rent:

The summer flies it mightily attracts.
Yet they seem choicer than
your sons of facts,
Which scarce