Poems of George Meredith, vol 3 | Page 7

silence thicken, heard it shriek,
Heard Life subsiding on the
eternal hum:
Welcome to women, when, between man's laws
And
Nature's thirsts, they, soul from body torn,
Give suck at breast to a
celestial cause,
Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn.

Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content,
To think the cure so
manifest, so frail
Her charm remaining. Was the curtain's rent
Too
wide? he but a man of that herd male?
She saw him as that herd of the
forked head
Butting the woman harrowed on her knees,
Clothed
only in life's last devouring red.
Confession at her fearful instant sees

Judicial Silence write the devil fact
In letters of the skeleton: at
once,
Swayed on the supplication of her act,
The rabble reading,
roaring to denounce,
She joins. No longer colouring, with skips
At
tangles, picture that for eyes in tears
Might swim the sequence, she
addressed her lips
To do the scaffold's office at his ears.
Into the bitter judgement of that herd
On women, she, deeming it
present, fell.
Her frenzy of abasement hugged the word
They stone
with, and so pile their citadel
To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt.

As had he flung it, in her breast it burned.
Face and reflect it did
her hot revolt
From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned;
Because
the golden buckler was withheld,
She to herself applies the
powder-spark,
For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled,

Perishing to astound the tyrant Dark.
She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain,
It rang through air to
sky, and rocked a world
That danced down shades the scarlet dance
profane;
Most women! see! by the man's view dustward hurled,

Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.
They sink upon their nature, the
unnamed,
And sops of nourishment may get some few,
In place of
understanding, scourged and shamed.
Barely have seasoned women understood
The great Irrational, who
thunders power,
Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood,
And
courts her in the covert's dewy hour;
Returning to his fortress nigh

night's end,
With execration of her daughters' lures.
They help him
the proud fortress to defend,
Nor see what front it wears, what life
immures,
The murder it commits; nor that its base
Is shifty as a
huckster's opening deal
For bargain under smoothest market face,

While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel,
Justice protests that Reason
is her seat;
Elect Convenience, as Reason masked,
Hears calmly
cramped Humanity entreat;
Until a sentient world is overtasked,

And rouses Reason's fountain-self: she calls
On Nature; Nature
answers: Share your guilt
In common when contention cracks the
walls
Of the big house which not on me is built.
The Lady said as much as breath will bear;
To happier sisters
inconceivable:
Contemptible to veterans of the fair,
Who show for a
convolving pearly shell,
A treasure of the shore, their written book.

As much as woman's breath will bear and live
Shaped she to words
beneath a knotted look,
That held as if for grain the summing sieve.

Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes
Our homely
daylight after dread of spells.
Lips sugared to let loose the little
snakes
Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells
About a story of the
naked flesh,
Intending but to put some garment on,
Should learn,
that in the subject they enmesh,
A traitor lurks and will be known
anon.
Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,
Stationed for index
down an ancient track:
And ware of it was he while she poured out

A broken moon on forest-waters black.
Though past the stage where midway men are skilled
To scan their
senses wriggling under plough,
When yet to the charmed seed of
speech distilled,
Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,

Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,
Not handsomely;
but now beholding bleed

Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech,

The valour of that rawness he could read.
Thence flashed it, as the
crimson currents ran
From senses up to thoughts, how she had read

Maternally the warm remainder man
Beneath his crust, and Nature's

pity shed,
In shedding dearer than heart's blood to light
His vision
of the path mild Wisdom walks.
Therewith he could espy
Confession's fright;
Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks;

They suck from soil, and have their urgencies
Beside and with the
lovely face mid leaves.
Veins of divergencies, convergencies,
Our
botanist in womankind perceives;
And if he hugs no wound, the man
can prize
That splendid consummation and sure proof
Of more than
heart in her, who might despise,
Who drowns herself, for pity up
aloof
To soar and be like Nature's pity: she
Instinctive of what
virtue in young days
Had served him for his pilot-star on sea,
To
trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze
Came out of rust, and more than
the schooled tongue
Was gifted to encourage and assure.
He gave
her of the deep well she had sprung;
And name it gratitude, the word
is poor.
But name it gratitude, is aught as rare
From sex to sex? And
let it have survived
Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair,

Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived:
Unknown to Passion,
generous for prey:
Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.
Their
tenderest of self did each one slay;
His cloak of dignity, her fleur de
luce;
Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,
Things living, slew they,
and no artery bled.
A moment of