Poems of George Meredith, vol 3 | Page 9

on black delirium sank,
While with her gentle
surgeon she communed,
And woman's prospect of the yoke repelled.

Her buried body gave her flowers and food;
The peace, the homely
skies, the springs that welled;
Love, the large love that folds the
multitude.
Soul's chastity in honesty, and this
With beauty, made
the dower to men refused.
And little do they know the prize they miss;

Which is their happy fortune! Thus he mused
For him, the cynic in the Sage had play
A hazy moment, by a breath
dispersed;
To think, of all alive most wedded they,
Whom time
disjoined! He needed her quick thirst
For renovated earth: on earth
she gazed,
With humble aim to foot beside the wise.
Lo, where the
eyelashes of night are raised
Yet lowly over morning's pure grey
eyes.
'LOVE IS WINGED FOR TWO'
Love is winged for two,
In the worst he weathers,
When their hearts
are tied;
But if they divide,
O too true!

Cracks a globe, and
feathers, feathers,
Feathers all the ground bestrew.

I was breast of morning sea,
Rosy plume on forest dun,
I the 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