Poems of George Meredith, vol 3 | Page 5

pride, exposing fruit,
And off with hat and apron
suit.
XXIX
We need much patience, well she knew,
And out and out, and
through and through,
When we would gentlefolk address,
However
we may seek to bless:
At times they hide them like the beasts
From
sacred beams; and mostly priests.

XXX
He gave no sign of making bare,
Nor she of faintness or despair.

Inflamed with hope that she might win,
If she but coaxed him to
begin,
She used all arts for making fain;
The mother with her babe
was Jane.
XXXI
Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not
Her business, waved her
from the spot.
Encircled by the men of might,
The head of Jane,
like flickering light,
As in a charger, they beheld
Ere she was from
the park expelled.
XXXII
Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,
Did 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