Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 13

VIII

She hears his wailful prayer, When now to the Invisible he raves To rend him from her, now of his mother craves Her calm, her care.

IX

The thing that shudders most Within him is the burden of his cry.

Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye The eyeless Ghost.

X

Or sometimes she will seem Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, With gold-buds dim.

XI

Once worshipped Prime of Powers, She still was the Implacable: as a beast, She struck him down and dragged him from the feast She crowned with flowers.

XII

Her pomp of glorious hues, Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile, Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile With symbol-clues.

XIII

The mystery she holds For him, inveterately he strains to see, And sight of his obtuseness is the key Among those folds.

XIV

He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed.

She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, Not his desire.

XV

She prompts him to rejoice, Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud.

He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed A wanton's choice.

XVI

Albeit thereof he has found Firm roadway between l.u.s.tfulness and pain; Has half transferred the battle to his brain, From b.l.o.o.d.y ground;

XVII

He will not read her good, Or wise, but with the pa.s.sion Self obscures; Through that old devil of the thousand lures, Through that dense hood:

XVIII

Through terror, through distrust; The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live: Through all that makes of him a sensitive Abhorring dust.

XIX

Behold his wormy home!

And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave To waste in foam.

XX

Therefore the wretch inclined Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith, Can raise him high: with vows of living faith For little signs.

XXI

Some signs he must demand, Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few, To satisfy the senses it is true, And in his hand,

XXII

This miracle which saves Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch, By virtue of his worth, contrasting much With brutes and knaves.

XXIII

From dust, of him abhorred, He would be s.n.a.t.c.hed by Grace discovering worth.

'Sever me from the hollowness of Earth!

Me take, dear Lord!'

XXIV

She hears him. Him she owes For half her loveliness a love well won By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, Their common foes.

XXV

He builds the soaring spires, That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws, Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, Her purest fires.

XXVI

Through him hath she exchanged, For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown Where monsters ranged.

XXVII

And order, high discourse, And decency, than which is life less dear, She has of him: the lyre of language clear, Love's tongue and source.

XXVIII

She hears him, and can hear With glory in his gains by work achieved: With grief for grief that is the unperceived In her so near.

XXIX

If he aloft for aid Imploring storms, her essence is the spur.

His cry to heaven is a cry to her He would evade.

x.x.x

Not elsewhere can he tend.

Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins; Those her revulsions from the skull that grins To ape his end.