Poems by George Meredith Volume Ii Part 37

From twig to twig the spider weaves At noon his webbing fine.

So near to mute the zephyrs flute That only leaflets dance.

The sun draws out of hazel leaves A smell of woodland wine.

I wake a swarm to sudden storm At any step's advance.

II

Along my path is bugloss blue, The star with fruit in moss; The foxgloves drop from throat to top A daily lesser bell.

The blackest shadow, nurse of dew, Has orange skeins across; And keenly red is one thin thread That flashing seems to swell.

III

My world I note ere fancy comes, Minutest hushed observe: What busy bits of motioned wits Through antlered mosswork strive.

But now so low the stillness hums, My springs of seeing swerve, For half a wink to thrill and think The woods with nymphs alive.

IV

I neighbour the invisible So close that my consent Is only asked for spirits masked To leap from trees and flowers.

And this because with them I dwell In thought, while calmly bent To read the lines dear Earth designs Shall speak her life on ours.

V

Accept, she says; it is not hard In woods; but she in towns Repeats, accept; and have we wept, And have we quailed with fears, Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward We have whom knowledge crowns; Who see in mould the rose unfold, The soul through blood and tears.

NATURE AND LIFE

I

Leave the uproar: at a leap Thou shalt strike a woodland path, Enter silence, not of sleep, Under shadows, not of wrath; Breath which is the spirit's bath In the old Beginnings find, And endow them with a mind, Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe.

That gives Nature to us, this Give we her, and so we kiss.

II

Fruitful is it so: but hear How within the sh.e.l.l thou art, Music sounds; nor other near Can to such a tremor start.

Of the waves our life is part; They our running harvests bear: Back to them for manful air, Laden with the woodland's heart!

That gives Battle to us, this Give we it, and good the kiss.

DIRGE IN WOODS

A wind sways the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there.

The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea.

Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so.

A FAITH ON TRIAL

On the morning of May, Ere the children had entered my gate With their wreaths and mechanical lay, A metal ding-dong of the date!

I mounted our hill, bearing heart That had little of life save its weight: The crowned Shadow poising dart Hung over her: she, my own, My good companion, mate, Pulse of me: she who had shown Fort.i.tude quiet as Earth's At the shedding of leaves. And around The sky was in garlands of cloud, Winning scents from unnumbered new births, Pointed buds, where the woods were browned By a mouldered beechen shroud; Or over our meads of the vale, Such an answer to sun as he, Brave in his gold; to a sound, None sweeter, of woods flapping sail, With the first full flood of our year, For their voyage on l.u.s.treful sea: Unto what curtained haven in chief, Will be writ in the book of the sere.

But surely the crew are we, Eager or stamped or bowed; Counted thinner at fall of the leaf.

Grief heard them, and pa.s.sed like a bier.

Due Summerward, lo, they were set, In volumes of foliage proud, On the heave of their favouring tides, And their song broadened out to the cheer When a neck of the ramping surf Rattles thunder a boat overrides.

All smiles ran the highways wet; The worm drew its links from the turf; The bird of felicity loud Spun high, and a South wind blew.

Weak out of sheath downy leaves Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, Their radiance asking, who grieves; For nought of a sorrow they knew: No s.p.a.ce to the dread wrestle vowed, No chamber in shadow of night.

At times as the steadier breeze Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd, The beam of them wafted my sight To league-long sun upon seas: The golden path we had crossed Many years, till her birthland swung Recovered to vision from lost, A light in her filial glance.

And sweet was her voice with the tongue, The speechful tongue of her France, Soon at ripple about us, like rills Ever busy with little: away Through her Normandy, down where the mills Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey As its bordering poplars bent To gusts off the plains above.

Old stone chateau and farms, Home of her birth and her love!

On the thread of the pasture you trace, By the river, their milk, for miles, Spotted once with the English tent, In days of the tocsin's alarms, To tower of the tallest of piles, The country's surveyor breast-high.

Home of her birth and her love!

Home of a diligent race; Thrifty, deft-handed to ply Shuttle or needle, and woo Sun to the roots of the pear Frogging each mud-walled cot.

The elders had known her in arms.

There plucked we the bluet, her hue Of the deeper forget-me-not; Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.

I saw, unsighting: her heart I saw, and the home of her love There printed, mournfully rent: Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, And the stride of the Shadow athwart.

For one of our Autumns there! . . .

Straight as the flight of a dove We went, swift winging we went.

We trod solid ground, we breathed air, The heavens were unbroken. Break they, The word of the world is adieu: Her word: and the torrents are round, The jawed wolf-waters of prey.

We stand upon isles, who stand: A Shadow before us, and back, A phantom the habited land.

We may cry to the Sunderer, spare That dearest! he loosens his pack.

Arrows we breathe, not air.

The memories tenderly bound To us are a drifting crew, Amid grey-gapped waters for ground.

Alone do we stand, each one, Till rootless as they we strew Those deeps of the corse-like stare At a foreign and stony sun.

Eyes had I but for the scene Of my circle, what neighbourly grew.

If haply no finger lay out To the figures of days that had been, I gathered my herb, and endured; My old cloak wrapped me about.

Unfooted was ground-ivy blue, Whose rustic shrewd odour allured In Spring's fresh of morning: unseen Her favourite wood-sorrel bell As yet, though the leaves' green floor Awaited their flower, that would tell Of a red-veined moist yestreen, With its droop and the hues it wore, When we two stood overnight One, in the dark van-glow On our hill-top, seeing beneath Our household's twinkle of light Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.

Budding, the service-tree, white Almost as whitebeam, threw, From the under of leaf upright, Flecks like a showering snow On the flame-shaped junipers green, On the sombre mounds of the yew.

Like silvery tapers bright By a solemn cathedral screen, They glistened to closer view.

Turf for a rooks' revel striped Pleased those devourers astute.

Chorister blackbird and thrush Together or alternate piped; A free-hearted harmony large, With meaning for man, for brute, When the primitive forces are brimmed.

Like featherings. .h.i.ther and yon Of aery tree-twigs over marge, To the comb of the winds, untrimmed, Their measure is found in the vast.

Grief heard them, and stepped her way on.

She has but a narrow embrace.

Distrustful of hearing she pa.s.sed.

They piped her young Earth's Bacchic rout; The race, and the prize of the race; Earth's l.u.s.tihead pressing to sprout.

But sight holds a soberer s.p.a.ce.

Colourless dogwood low Curled up a twisted root, Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush Redder than sun upon rocks, When the creeper clematis-shoot Shall climb, cap his branches, and show, Beside veteran green of the box, At close of the year's maple blush, A bleeding greybeard is he, Now hale in the leaf.a.ge lush.