Poems by George Meredith Volume I Part 4

ANGELIC LOVE

Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips To meet its earthly mate; Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse Can dare to join its fate With one beloved devoted human heart, And share with it the pa.s.sion and the smart, The undying bliss Of its most fleeting kiss; The fading grace Of its most sweet embrace:- Angelic love, heroic love!

Whose birth can only be above, Whose wandering must be on earth, Whose haven where it first had birth!

Love that can part with all but its own worth, And joy in every sacrifice That beautifies its Paradise!

And gently, like a golden-fruited vine, With earnest tenderness itself consign, And creeping up deliriously entwine Its dear delicious arms Round the beloved being!

With fair unfolded charms, All-trusting, and all-seeing, - Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!

While to the panting heart's dry yearning drouth Buds the rich dewy mouth - Tenderly uplifted, Like two rose-leaves drifted Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!

Such love, such love is thine, Such heart is mine, O thou of mortal visions most divine!

TWILIGHT MUSIC

Know you the low pervading breeze That softly sings In the trembling leaves of twilight trees, As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?

And have you marked their still degrees Of ebbing melody, like the strings Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand In some strange glimmering land, 'Mid gushing springs, And glistenings Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!

And have you marked in that still time The chariots of those shining cars Brighten upon the hushing dark, And bent to hark That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime, Pause in the dilating l.u.s.tre Of the spheral cl.u.s.ter; Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!

And felt, despite earth's jarring wars, When day is done And dead the sun, Still a voice divine can sing, Still is there sympathy can bring A whisper from the stars!

Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know How like a tree I tremble to the tones Of your sweet voice!

How keenly I rejoice When in me with sweet motions slow The spiritual music ebbs and moans - Lives in the l.u.s.tre of those heavenly eyes, Dies in the light of its own paradise, - Dies, and relives eternal from its death, Immortal melodies in each deep breath; Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to thee Myself, the weight of its eternity; Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire, It marries music with the human lyre, Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.

REQUIEM

Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless, Where pa.s.sion is silent and hearts never crave; Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream, In patience and peace thou art gone--to thy grave!

Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning, Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.

Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying, How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?

Placidly fading, and sinking and shading At last to that shadow, the latest desert; Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.

Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens, The world and its voices, the sea and the sky, The bloom of creation, the tie of relation, All--all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye; The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten, Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless; And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth; No last loving token of wedded love broken, No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth; Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower, Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS

Take thy lute and sing By the ruined castle walls, Where the torrent-foam falls, And long weeds wave: Take thy lute and sing, O'er the grey ancestral grave!

Daughter of a King, Tune thy string.

Sing of happy hours, In the roar of rushing time; Till all the echoes chime To the days gone by; Sing of pa.s.sing hours To the ever-present sky; - Weep--and let the showers Wake thy flowers.

Sing of glories gone:- No more the blazoned fold From the banner is unrolled; The gold sun is set.

Sing his glory gone, For thy voice may charm him yet; Daughter of the dawn, He is gone!

Pour forth all thy grief!

Pa.s.sionately sweep the chords, Wed them quivering to thy words; Wild words of wail!

Shed thy withered grief - But hold not Autumn to thy bale; The eddy of the leaf Must be brief!

Sing up to the night: Hard it is for streaming tears To read the calmness of the spheres; Coldly they shine; Sing up to their light; They have views thou may'st divine - Gain prophetic sight From their light!

On the windy hills Lo, the little harebell leans On the spire-gra.s.s that it queens, With bonnet blue; Trusting love instils Love and subject reverence true; Learn what love instils On the hills!

By the bare wayside Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks, Softly touch'd with pale green streaks, Soon, soon, to die; On the clothed hedgeside Bands of rosy beauties vie, In their prophesied Summer pride.

From the snowdrop learn; Not in her pale life lives she, But in her blushing prophecy.

Thus be thy hopes, Living but to yearn Upwards to the hidden scopes; - Even within the urn Let them burn!

Heroes of thy race - Warriors with golden crowns, Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns Stare thee to stone; Matrons of thy race Pa.s.s before thee making moan; Full of solemn grace Is their pace.

Piteous their despair!

Piteous their looks forlorn!

Terrible their ghostly scorn!

Still hold thou fast; - Heed not their despair! - Thou art thy future, not thy past; Let them glance and glare Thro' the air.

Thou the ruin's bud, Be not that moist rich-smelling weed With its arras-sembled brede, And ruin-haunting stalk; Thou the ruin's bud, Be still the rose that lights the walk, Mix thy fragrant blood With the flood!

THE RAPE OF AURORA

Never, O never, Since dewy sweet Flora Was ravished by Zephyr, Was such a thing heard In the valleys so hollow!

Till rosy Aurora, Uprising as ever, Bright Phosphor to follow, Pale Phoebe to sever, Was caught like a bird To the breast of Apollo!

Wildly she flutters, And flushes all over With pa.s.sionate mutters Of shame to the hush Of his amorous whispers: But O such a lover Must win when he utters, Thro' rosy red lispers, The pains that discover The wishes that gush From the torches of Hesperus.

One finger just touching The Orient chamber, Unflooded the gushing Of light that illumed All her l.u.s.trous unveiling.

On clouds of glow amber, Her limbs richly blushing, She lay sweetly wailing, In odours that gloomed On the G.o.d as he bloomed O'er her loveliness paling.

Great Pan in his covert Beheld the rare glistening, The cry of the love-hurt, The sigh and the kiss Of the latest close mingling; But love, thought he, listening, Will not do a dove hurt, I know,--and a tingling, Latent with bliss, p.r.i.c.kt thro' him, I wis, For the Nymph he was singling.

SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND