Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 35

THE APPEAs.e.m.e.nT OF DEMETER

I

Demeter devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter s.n.a.t.c.hed below.

Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray.

Now whether night advancing, whether day, Scarce did the baldness show: The hand of man was a defeated hand.

II

Necessity, the primal goad to growth, Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.

High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.

III

Lean gra.s.sblades losing green on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.

Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please.

A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.

IV

No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, And whose pale place of habitation mute, She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit Anciently, gaped for bloom: Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.

V

The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.

Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.

It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.

Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.

More than for her who grieved, She could for this waste home have piped the wail.

VI

Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled, Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.

Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground Rocky in spikes rebelled Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

VII

The valley people up the ashen scoop She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win Her Mistress in compa.s.sion of yon group So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, White as in chalk outlining little O, Dumb, from a falling chin; Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.

VIII

Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when Dark underwaters the recesses choke; With cluck and upper quiver of a hen In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.

Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount Bountiful of old days, heard them recount This and that cruel stroke: Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

IX

A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold An earth in awe before the claps resound And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled, The barren Nourisher unmelted shed Death from the looks that wandered with the dead Out of the realms of gold, In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.

X

Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised The cattle-call above the moan of prayer; And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed, Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare: The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view Seas that have struck brave ships ash.o.r.e, while through Shoots the swift foamspit: bare They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.

XI

Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse: Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood.

Whereat the G.o.ddess, in a dim remorse, Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch p.r.i.c.ked.

Neighing within, at either's flank they licked; Played on a moment's force At courtship, withering to the crazy nod.

XII

The nod was that we gather for consent; And mournfully amid the group a dame, Interpreting the thing in nature meant, Her hands held out like bearers of the flame, And nodded for the negative sideways.

Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays From the Great Mother came: Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.

XIII

She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none Like thunder of the song of heart: her face, The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, And peal on peal across the hills held chase.

She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire Full of the marrowy race.

Her laughter, G.o.ds! was flesh on skeleton.

XIV

The valley people huddled, broke, afraid, a.s.sured, and taking lightning in the veins, They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed, Unwitting happiness till golden rains Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat Pouring to heal their pains: And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.

XV

Iambe clapped to see the kindly l.u.s.ts Inspire the valley people, still on seas, Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts, With rapture in their wonderment; but these, Low homage being rendered, ran to plough, Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow Calves at the teats they tease: Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.

XVI

Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red, The tree of water and the tree of wood: And soon among the branches overhead Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food.

O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth.

Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth!

Good for the spirit, good For body, thou! to both art wine and bread!

EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN

I

The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, Has told of rain upon the fall of day.

But promise is there none for Susan's drouth, That he will come, who keeps in dry delay.

The freshest of the village three years gone, She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived; And she and Earth are one In withering unrevived.