Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 7

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 tug.
VIII
He pulled till his master jumped?For fury of wrath, and laid on?With the length of a tough knotted staff,?Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,?And leave a sheer carcase anon.
IX
That done, he sat, panted, and cursed?The vile cross of this brute: nevermore?Would he house it to rear such a cur!?The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,?Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.
X
Then his master raised head too, and sniffed:?It struck him the dog had a sense?That honoured both dam and sire.?You have guessed how the tower was afire.?The Shannon retriever dates thence.
XI
I mused: saw the pup ease his heart?Of his instinct for chasing, and sink?Overwrought by excitement so new:?A scene that for Koby to view?Was the seizure of nerves in a link.
XII
And part sympathetic, and part?Imitatively, raged my poor brute;?And I, not thinking of ill,?Doing eviller: nerves are still?Our savage too quick at the root.
XIII
They spring us: I proved it, albeit?I played executioner then?For discipline, justice, the like.?Yon stick I had handy to strike?Should have warned of the tyrant in men.
XIV
You read in your History books,?How the Prince in his youth had a mind?For governing gently his land.?Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,?When the temper is other than kind!
XV
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