Poems of George Meredith, vol 3 | Page 5

Jane around communicate:?For that the moment when began?The holy but mistaken man,?In view of light, to take his lift,?They cut him from her charm adrift!
XXXIII
And he was lost: a banished face?For ever from the ways of grace,?Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.?They saw the Bishop's wavering sprite?Within her look, at come and go,?Long after he had caused her woe.
XXXIV
Her greying eyes (until she sank?At Fredsham on the wayside bank,?Like cinder heaps that whitened lie?From coals that shot the flame to sky)?Had glassy vacancies, which yearned?For one in memory discerned.
XXXV
May those who ply the tongue that cheats,?And those who rush to beer and meats,?And those whose mean ambition aims?At palaces and titled names,?Depart in such a cheerful strain?As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!
XXXVI
Her end was beautiful: one sigh.?She jumped a foot when it was nigh.?A lily in a linen clout?She looked when they had laid her out.?It is a lily-light she bears?For England up the ladder-stairs.
THE RIDDLE FOR MEN
I
This Riddle rede or die,?Says History since our Flood,?To warn her sons of power:-?It can be truth, it can be lie;?Be parasite to twist awry;?The drouthy vampire for your blood;?The fountain of the silver flower;?A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;?Supple of wax or tempered steel;?The spur to honour, snake in nest:?'Tis as you will with it to deal;?To wear upon the breast,?Or trample under heel.
II
And rede you not aright,?Says Nature, still in red?Shall History's tale be writ!?For solely thus you lead to light?The trailing chapters she must write,?And pass my fiery test of dead?Or living through the furnace-pit:?Dislinked from who the softer hold?In grip of brute, and brute remain:?Of whom the woeful tale is told,?How for one short Sultanic reign,?Their bodies lapse to mould,?Their souls behowl the plain.
THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY
I
One fairest of the ripe unwedded left?Her shadow on the Sage's path; he found,?By common signs, that she had done a theft.?He could have made the sovereign heights resound?With questions of the wherefore of her state:?He on far other but an hour before?Intent. And was it man, or was it mate,?That she disdained? or was there haply more?
About her mouth a placid humour slipped?The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve?Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped.?The surface was attentive to receive,?The secret underneath enfolded fast.?She had the step of the unconquered, brave,?Not arrogant; and if the vessel's mast?Waved liberty, no challenge did it wave.?Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls,?With something of a wavering line unspelt.?They hold the look whose tenderness condoles?For what the sister in the look has dealt?Of fatal beyond healing; and her tones?A woman's honeyed amorous outvied,?As when in a dropped viol the wood-throb moans?Among the sobbing strings, that plain and chide?Like infants for themselves, less deep to thrill?Than those rich mother-notes for them breathed round.?Those voices are not magic of the will?To strike love's wound, but of love's wound give sound,?Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams.?They waft to the moist tropics after storm,?When out of passion spent thick incense steams,?And jewel-belted clouds the wreck transform.
Was never hand on brush or lyre to paint?Her gracious manners, where the nuptial ring?Of melody clasped motion in restraint:?The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing.?With such endowments armed was she and decked?To make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind;?Surpassing many a giant intellect,?The marvel of that cradled infant mind.?It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe;?Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed;?And promised in fair feminine to grow?A Sage's match and mate, more heavenly orbed.
II
Across his path the spouseless Lady cast?Her shadow, and the man that thing became.?His youth uprising called his age the Past.?This was the strong grey head of laurelled name,?And in his bosom an inverted Sage?Mistook for light of morn the light which sank.?But who while veins run blood shall know the page?Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank??Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud,?Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in?To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed,?Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin?Quick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphs?Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent;?They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs?For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent!?Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth,?The legends of her mission to beguile?
Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youth?He bore at times, and tempted the sly smile;?And not on her soft lips was it descried.?She stepped her way benevolently grave:?Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride,?By tossing victim to the courtier knave,?Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign.?Rather 'twas humbleness in being pursued,?As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine.?Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed??All wisdom's armoury this man could wield;?And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased?Traverse her woman's curtain and poor shield,?For