Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 7

give breathing of the sty's content

For their diurnal carnal nourishment:
Which treat with Nature in
official pacts.
The deader body Nature could proclaim.
Much life
have neither. Let the heavens of wrath
Rattle, then both scud
scattering to froth.
But during calms the flies of idle aim
Less put
the spirit out, less baffle thirst
For light than swinish grunters, blest or
curst.
ON THE DANGER OF WAR

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,
This threat of War, that
shows a land brain-sick.
When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric

Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food.
Dark looms the issue
though the cause be good,
But with the doubt 'tis our old devil's trick.

O now the down-slope of the lunatic
Illumine lest we redden of
that brood.
For not since man in his first view of thee
Ascended to
the heavens giving sign
Within him of deep sky and sounded sea,

Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;
In peril of his blood his ears
incline
To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.
TO CARDINAL MANNING
I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,
Or straining for the angel of
the light,
Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,
When I behold one
lamp that through our fen
Goes hourly where most noisome; hear
again
A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright
From speaking
to the soul of us forthright
What things our craven senses keep from
ken.
This is the doing of the Christ; the way
He went on earth; the
service above guile
To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;
Cries
to the Mammonites: Allay, allay
Such misery as by these present
signs
Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.
TO COLONEL CHARLES (DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)
I
An English heart, my commandant,
A soldier's eye you have, awake

To right and left; with looks askant
On bulwarks not of adamant,

Where white our Channel waters break.
II
Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness
Across the ruffled strip of salt,

You look, and like the prospect less.
On men and guns would you lay
stress,
To bid the Island's foemen halt.

III
While loud the Year is raising cry
At birth to know if it must bear

In history the bloody dye,
An English heart, a soldier's eye,
For the
old country first will care.
IV
And how stands she, artillerist,
Among the vapours waxing dense,

With cannon charged? 'Tis hist! and hist!
And now she screws a
gouty fist,
And now she counts to clutch her pence.
V
With shudders chill as aconite,
The couchant chewer of the cud

Will start at times in pussy fright
Before the dogs, when reads her
sprite
The streaks predicting streams of blood.
VI
She thinks they may mean something; thinks
They may mean nothing:
haply both.
Where darkness all her daylight drinks,
She fain would
find a leader lynx,
Not too much taxing mental sloth.
VII
Cleft like the fated house in twain,
One half is, Arm! and one,
Retrench!
Gambetta's word on dull MacMahon:
'The cow that sees
a passing train':
So spies she Russian, German, French.
VIII
She? no, her weakness: she unbraced
Among those athletes fronting
storms!
The muscles less of steel than paste,
Why, they of nature
feel distaste
For flash, much more for push, of arms.

IX
The poet sings, and well know we,
That 'iron draws men after it.'

But towering wealth may seem the tree
Which bears the fruit
INDEMNITY,
And draw as fast as battle's fit,
X
If feeble be the hand on guard,
Alas, alas! And nations are
Still the
mad forces, though the scarred.
Should they once deem our emblem
Pard
Wagger of tail for all save war; -
XI
Mechanically screwed to flail
His flanks by Presses conjuring fear; -

A money-bag with head and tail; -
Too late may valour then avail!

As you beheld, my cannonier,
XII
When with the staff of Benedek,
On the plateau of Koniggratz,
You
saw below that wedgeing speck;
Foresaw proud Austria rammed to
wreck,
Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.
February 1887.
TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS
I
Strike not thy dog with a stick!
I did it yesterday:
Not to undo
though I gained
The Paradise: heavy it rained
On Kobold's flanks,
and he lay.
II
Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,
From his hunt had come back to my

heel.
I heard a sharp worrying sound,
And Bruno foamed on the
ground,
With Koby as making a meal.
III
I did what I could not undo
Were the gates of the Paradise shut

Behind me: I deemed it was just.
I left Koby crouched in the dust,

Some yards from the woodman's hut.
IV
He bewhimpered his welting, and I
Scarce thought it enough for him:
so,
By degrees, through the upper box-grove,
Within me an old
story hove,
Of a man and a dog: you shall know.
V
The dog was of novel breed,
The Shannon retriever, untried:
His
master, an old Irish lord,
In an oaken armchair snored
At midnight,
whisky beside.
VI
Perched up a desolate tower,
Where the black storm-wind was a whip

To set it nigh spinning, these two
Were alone, like the last of a
crew,
Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.
VII
The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;
He quitted his couch on the rug,

Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;
And, finding the signals
unmarked,
Caught a hand in a death-grapple