Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 9

ME,
Love meet they who do not shove

Cravings in the van of Love.
Courtly dames are here to woo,

Knowing love if it be true.
Reverence the blossom-shoot
Fervently,
they are the fruit.
Mark them stepping, hear them talk,
Goddess, is
no myth inane,
You will say of those who walk
In the woods of
Westermain.
Waters that from throat and thigh
Dart the sun his
arrows back;
Leaves that on a woodland sigh
Chat of secret things
no lack;
Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,
Bare or veiled they
move sincere;
Not by slavish terrors tripped
Being anew in nature
dipped,
Growths of what they step on, these;
With the roots the
grace of trees.
Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,
For a tyrant's
flattered pride,
Mind, which nourished not by light,
Lurks the
shuffling trickster sprite:
Whereof are strange tales to tell;
Some in
blood writ, tombed in bell.
Here the ancient battle ends,
Joining two
astonished friends,
Who the kiss can give and take
With more
warmth than in that world
Where the tiger claws the snake,
Snake
her tiger clasps infurled,
And the issue of their fight
People lands in
snarling plight.
Here her splendid beast she leads
Silken-leashed
and decked with weeds
Wild as he, but breathing faint
Sweetness of
unfelt constraint.
Love, the great volcano, flings
Fires of lower
Earth to sky;
Love, the sole permitted, sings
Sovereignly of ME and
I.
Bowers he has of sacred shade,
Spaces of superb parade,

Voiceful . . . But bring you a note
Wrangling, howsoe'er remote,


Discords out of discord spin
Round and round derisive din:
Sudden
will a pallor pant
Chill at screeches miscreant;
Owls or spectres,
thick they flee;
Nightmare upon horror broods;
Hooded laughter,
monkish glee,
Gaps the vital air.
Enter these enchanted woods

You who dare.
IV
You must love the light so well
That no darkness will seem fell.

Love it so you could accost
Fellowly a livid ghost.
Whish! the
phantom wisps away,
Owns him smoke to cocks of day.
In your
breast the light must burn
Fed of you, like corn in quern
Ever
plumping while the wheel
Speeds the mill and drains the meal.

Light to light sees little strange,
Only features heavenly new;
Then
you touch the nerve of Change,
Then of Earth you have the clue;

Then her two-sexed meanings melt
Through you, wed the thought
and felt.
Sameness locks no scurfy pond
Here for Custom,
crazy-fond:
Change is on the wing to bud
Rose in brain from rose
in blood.
Wisdom throbbing shall you see
Central in complexity;

From her pasture 'mid the beasts
Rise to her ethereal feasts,
Not,
though lightnings track your wit
Starward, scorning them you quit:

For be sure the bravest wing
Preens it in our common spring,

Thence along the vault to soar,
You with others, gathering more,

Glad of more, till you reject
Your proud title of elect,
Perilous even
here while few
Roam the arched greenwood with you.
Heed that
snare.
Muffled by his cavern-cowl
Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,

Who was lord ere light you drank,
And lest blood of knightly rank

Stream, let not your fair princess
Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,

Watches keenly there.
Oft has he been riven; slain
Is no force in
Westermain.
Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,
Put his fangs to
uses, tame,
Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,
How to cure him
sick and lame.
Much restricted, much enringed,
Much he frets, the
hooked and winged,
Never known to spare.
'Tis enough: the name

of Sage
Hits no thing in nature, nought;
Man the least, save when
grave Age
From yon Dragon guards his thought.
Eye him when you
hearken dumb
To what words from Wisdom come.
When she says
how few are by
Listening to her, eye his eye.
Self, his name declare.

Him shall Change, transforming late,
Wonderously renovate.

Hug himself the creature may:
What he hugs is loathed decay.

Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!
Change will strip his armour off;

Make of him who was all maw,
Inly only thrilling-shrewd,
Such
a servant as none saw
Through his days of dragonhood.
Days when
growling o'er his bone,
Sharpened he for mine and thine;
Sensitive
within alone;
Scaly as the bark of pine.
Change, the strongest son of
Life,
Has the Spirit here to wife.
Lo, their young of vivid breed,

Bear the lights that onward speed,
Threading thickets, mounting
glades,
Up the verdurous colonnades,
Round the fluttered curves,
and down,
Out of sight of Earth's blue crown,
Whither, in her
central space,
Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase.
Fount
unresting, Lure divine!
There meet all: too late look most.
Fire in
water hued as wine,
Springs amid a shadowy host,
Circled: one
close-headed mob,
Breathless, scanning divers heaps,
Where a
Heart begins to throb,
Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.
And 'tis
very strange, 'tis said,
How you spy in each of them

Semblance of
that Dragon red,
As the oak in bracken-stem.
And, 'tis said, how
each and each:
Which commences, which subsides:
First my
Dragon! doth beseech
Her who food for all provides.
And she
answers with no sign;
Utters neither yea nor nay;
Fires the water
hued as wine;
Kneads another spark in clay.
Terror is about her hid;

Silence of the thunders locked;
Lightnings lining the shut lid;

Fixity on quaking rocked.
Lo, you look at Flow and Drought

Interflashed and interwrought:
Ended is begun, begun
Ended, quick
as torrents run.
Young Impulsion spouts to sink;
Luridness and
lustre link;
'Tis your come and go of breath;
Mirrored pants the Life,
the Death;
Each of either reaped and sown:
Rosiest rosy wanes to
crone.
See you so? your senses drift;
'Tis a shuttle weaving swift.


Look with spirit past the sense,
Spirit shines in permanence.
That is
She, the