Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 3

Else better were it in some bower of peace Slothful to swing, contending with the flies.

You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies.

So following her, your hewing may attain The right to speak unto the mute, and shun That sly temptation of the illumined brain, Deliveries oracular, self-spun.

Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.

THE STATE OF AGE

Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg Honours from aught about thee. Light the young.

Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.

Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue, Turning dead trifles, like the c.o.c.k of dung, Which runs, Time's contrast to thy halting leg.

Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires.

But hast thou in thy season set her fires To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I Drops p.r.o.ne and void as any thoughtless dash.

PROGRESS

In Progress you have little faith, say you: Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, By force, and gentle women choose their mates Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: The human heart Bellona's mad halloo Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates.

'Now at this time,' says History, 'those two States Stood ready their past wrestling to renew.

They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred The b.l.o.o.d.y settlement of their disputes Till G.o.d should bless them better.' They did right.

And naming Progress, both shall have the word.

THE WORLD'S ADVANCE

Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.

You have perchance observed the inebriate's track At night when he has quitted the inn-sign: He plays diversions on the homeward line, Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack: A hedge may take him, but he turns not back, Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine.

'Spiral,' the memorable Lady terms Our mind's ascent: our world's advance presents That figure on a flat; the way of worms.

Cherish the promise of its good intents, And warn it, not one instinct to efface Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.

A CERTAIN PEOPLE

As Puritans they prominently wax, And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.

Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal c.o.c.ks, They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.

But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks When Peace another door in them unlocks, Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe.

Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, Fearing the G.o.d they flout, the G.o.d they glut.

They need their pious exercises less Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief That these are devilish only to their thief, Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS

That Garden of sedate Philosophy Once flourished, fenced from pa.s.sion and mishap, A shining spot upon a s.h.a.ggy map; Where mind and body, in fair junction free, Luted their joyful concord; like the tree From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.

Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature's lap Of gentlemen the happy nursery.

That Garden would on light supremest verge, Were the long drawing of an equal breath Healthful for Wisdom's head, her heart, her aims.

Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge, And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims The crucifix that came of Nazareth.

A LATER ALEXANDRIAN

An inspiration caught from dubious hues Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased; For they lead farther than the single-faced, Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.

The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse, His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.

Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced, And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews.

Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled Responsively: he sang not Nature's own Divinest, but his lyric had a tone, As 'twere a forest-echo of her voice: What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice.

AN ORSON OF THE MUSE

Her son, albeit the Muse's livery And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts, Naked and hairy in his savage haunts, To Nature only will he bend the knee; Spouting the founts of her distillery Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants Being Nature's, civil limitation daunts His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.

Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate, The Muse will hearken to with graver ear Than many of her train can waken: him Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight, If in no vessel built for sea they swim.

THE POINT OF TASTE

Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!

You to reviewers are as ball to bat.

They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime On you the excommunicates of Rhyme, Because you sing not in the living Fat.

The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat Is verse that shuns their self-producing time.

Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, You win their pleased attention. But, bright G.o.d O' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!

Rather for us a tavern-catch, and b.u.mp Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobn.o.bs.

CAMELUS SALTAT