Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 6

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 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