Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 4

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 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