Poems of George Meredith, vol 2 | Page 8

all was well; Koby's ribs?Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,?He forgives me, his criminal air?Throws a shade of Llewellyn's despair?For the hound slain for saving his child.
THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN
I
Enter these enchanted woods,?You who dare.?Nothing harms beneath the leaves?More than waves a swimmer cleaves.?Toss your heart up with the lark,?Foot at peace with mouse and worm,?Fair you fare.?Only at a dread of dark?Quaver, and they quit their form:?Thousand eyeballs under hoods?Have you by the hair.?Enter these enchanted woods,?You who dare.
II
Here the snake across your path?Stretches in his golden bath:?Mossy-footed squirrels leap?Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:?Yaffles on a chuckle skim?Low to laugh from branches dim:?Up the pine, where sits the star,?Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.?Each has business of his own;?But should you distrust a tone,?Then beware.?Shudder all the haunted roods,?All the eyeballs under hoods?Shroud you in their glare.?Enter these enchanted woods,?You who dare.
III
Open hither, open hence,?Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,?Where the strawberry runs red,?With white star-flower overhead;?Cumbered by dry twig and cone,?Shredded husks of seedlings flown,?Mine of mole and spotted flint:?Of dire wizardry no hint,?Save mayhap the print that shows?Hasty outward-tripping toes,?Heels to terror on the mould.?These, the woods of Westermain,?Are as others to behold,?Rich of wreathing sun and rain;?Foliage lustreful around?Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.?Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,?Shelter eager minikins,?Myriads, free to peck and pipe:?Would you better? would you worse??You with them may gather ripe?Pleasures flowing not from purse.?Quick and far as Colour flies?Taking the delighted eyes,?You of any well that springs?May unfold the heaven of things;?Have it homely and within,?And thereof its likeness win,?Will you so in soul's desire:?This do sages grant t' the lyre.?This is being bird and more,?More than glad musician this;?Granaries you will have a store?Past the world of woe and bliss;?Sharing still its bliss and woe;?Harnessed to its hungers, no.?On the throne Success usurps,?You shall seat the joy you feel?Where a race of water chirps,?Twisting hues of flourished steel:?Or where light is caught in hoop?Up a clearing's leafy rise,?Where the crossing deerherds troop?Classic splendours, knightly dyes.?Or, where old-eyed oxen chew?Speculation with the cud,?Read their pool of vision through,?Back to hours when mind was mud;?Nigh the knot, which did untwine?Timelessly to drowsy suns;?Seeing Earth a slimy spine,?Heaven a space for winging tons.?Farther, deeper, may you read,?Have you sight for things afield,?Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,?Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;?Showing a kind face and sweet:?Look you with the soul you see't.?Glory narrowing to grace,?Grace to glory magnified,?Following that will you embrace?Close in arms or aery wide.?Banished is the white Foam-born?Not from here, nor under ban?Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn,?Pipings of the reedy Pan.?Loved of Earth of old they were,?Loving did interpret her;?And the sterner worship bars?None whom Song has made her stars.?You have seen the huntress moon?Radiantly facing dawn,?Dusky meads between them strewn?Glimmering like downy awn:?Argent Westward glows the hunt,?East the blush about to climb;?One another fair they front,?Transient, yet outshine the time;?Even as dewlight off the rose?In the mind a jewel sows.?Thus opposing grandeurs live?Here if Beauty be their dower:?Doth she of her spirit give,?Fleetingness will spare her flower.?This is in the tune we play,?Which no spring of strength would quell;?In subduing does not slay;?Guides the channel, guards the well:?Tempered holds the young blood-heat,?Yet through measured grave accord,?Hears the heart of wildness beat?Like a centaur's hoof on sward.?Drink the sense the notes infuse,?You a larger self will find:?Sweetest fellowship ensues?With the creatures of your kind.?Ay, and Love, if Love it be?Flaming over I and 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