Poems of George Meredith, vol 3 | Page 9

laugh in rainy fleeces,?While with me?She made one.?Now must we pick up our pieces,?For that then so winged were we.
'ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE'
Ask, is Love divine,?Voices all are, ay.?Question for the sign,?There's a common sigh.?Would we, through our years,?Love forego,?Quit of scars and tears??Ah, but no, no, no!
'JOY IS FLEET'
Joy is fleet,?Sorrow slow.?Love, so sweet,?Sorrow will sow.?Love, that has flown?Ere day's decline,?Love to have known,?Sorrow, be mine!
THE LESSON OF GRIEF
Not ere the bitter herb we taste,?Which ages thought of happy times,?To plant us in a weeping waste,?Rings with our fellows this one heart?Accordant chimes.
When I had shed my glad year's leaf,?I did believe I stood alone,?Till that great company of Grief?Taught me to know this craving heart?For not my own.
WIND ON THE LYRE
That was the chirp of Ariel?You heard, as overhead it flew,?The farther going more to dwell,?And wing our green to wed our blue;?But whether note of joy or knell,?Not his own Father-singer knew;?Nor yet can any mortal tell,?Save only how it shivers through;?The breast of us a sounded shell,?The blood of us a lighted dew.
THE YOUTHFUL QUEST
His Lady queen of woods to meet,?He wanders day and night:?The leaves have whisperings discreet,?The mossy ways invite.
Across a lustrous ring of space,?By covert hoods and caves,?Is promise of her secret face?In film that onward waves.
For darkness is the light astrain,?Astrain for light the dark.?A grey moth down a larches' lane?Unwinds a ghostly spark.
Her lamp he sees, and young desire?Is fed while cloaked she flies.?She quivers shot of violet fire?To ash at look of eyes.
THE EMPTY PURSE--A SERMON TO OUR LATER PRODIGAL SON
Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank,?Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!?Quenched youth, and is that thy purse??Even such limp slough as the snake has left?Slack to the gale upon spikes of whin,?For cast-off coat of a life gone blank,?In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine;?And thine to crave and to curse?The sweet thing once within.?Accuse him: some devil committed the theft,?Which leaves of the portly a skin,?No more; of the weighty a whine.
Pursue him: and first, to be sure of his track,?Over devious ways that have led to this,?In the stream's consecutive line,?Let memory lead thee back?To where waves Morning her fleur-de-lys,?Unflushed at the front of the roseate door?Unopened yet: never shadow there?Of a Tartarus lighted by Dis?For souls whose cry is, alack!?An ivory cradle rocks, apeep?Through his eyelashes' laugh, a breathing pearl.?There the young chief of the animals wore?A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware?Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap.?In a dingle away from a rutted highroad,?Around him the earliest throstle and merle,?Our human smile between milk and sleep,?Effervescent of Nature he crowed.?Fair was that season; furl over furl?The banners of blossom; a dancing floor?This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair?Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast:?Careless, a centre of vigilant care.?Thy mother kisses an infant curl.?The room of the toys was a boundless nest,?A kingdom the field of the games,?Till entered the craving for more,?And the worshipped small body had aims.?A good little idol, as records attest,?When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream?By sweets and caresses: he gave but sign?That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race,?Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine.?Almost magician, his earliest dream?Was lord of the unpossessed?For a look; himself and his chase,?As on puffs of a wind at whirl,?Made one in the wink of a gleam.?She kisses a locket curl,?She conjures to vision a cherub face,?When her butterfly counted his day?All meadow and flowers, mishap?Derided, and taken for play?The fling of an urchin's cap.?When her butterfly showed him an eaglet born,?For preying too heedlessly bred,?What a heart clapped in thee then!?With what fuller colours of morn!?And high to the uttermost heavens it flew,?Swift as on poet's pen.?It flew to be wedded, to wed?The mystery scented around:?Issue of flower and dew,?Issue of light and sound:?Thinner than either; a thread?Spun of the dream they threw?To kindle, allure, evade.?It ran the sea-wave, the garden's dance,?To the forest's dark heart down a dappled glade;?Led on by a perishing glance,?By a twinkle's eternal waylaid.?Woman, the name was, when she took form;?Sheaf of the wonders of life. She fled,?Close imaged; she neared, far seen. How she made?Palpitate earth of the living and dead!?Did she not show thee the world designed?Solely for loveliness? Nested warm,?The day was the morrow in flight. And for thee,?She muted the discords, tuned, refined;?Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak.?Eye of the waters, and throb of the tree,?Sliding on radiance, winging from shade,?With her witch-whisper o'er ruins, in reeds,?She sang low the song of her promise delayed;?Beckoned and died, as a finger of smoke?Astream over woodland. And was not she?History's heroines white on storm??Remember her summons to valorous deeds.?Shone she a lure of the honey-bag swarm,?Most was her beam on