Poems by George Meredith Volume Iii Part 17

On her lost arm love bade her look; On her one hand to meditate; The tumult of her blood abate; Disaster face, derision brook: Forbade the page of her Historic Muse, Until her demon his last hold forsook, And smoothly, with no countenance of hate, Her conqueror she could scan to measure. Thence The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense, Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse, Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid; From the top billow of victorious War, Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow; A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade.

She read the things that are; Reality unaccepted read For sign of the distraught, and took her blow To brain; herself read through; Wherefore her predatory Glory paid Napoleon ransom knew.

Her nature's many strings hot gusts did jar Against the note of reason uttered low, Ere pa.s.sionate with duty she might wed, Compel the bride's embrace of her stern groom, Joined at an altar liker to the tomb, Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed, They not the less were mated and proclaimed The rational their issue. Then she rose.

See how the rush of southern Springtide glows Oceanic in the chariot-wheel's ascent, Illuminated with one breath. The maimed, Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly Had stature; to the world's wonderment, Fair features, grace of mien, nor least The comic dimples round her April mouth, Sprung of her intimate humanity.

She stood before mankind the very South Rapt out of frost to flowery drapery; Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.

IX

Let but the rational prevail, Our footing is on ground though all else fail: Our kiss of Earth is then a plight To walk within her Laws and have her light.

Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves; There is no fate but when unreason lours.

This Land the cheerful toiler delves, The thinker brightens with fine wit, The lovelier grace as lyric flowers, Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves Shall nurse for effort infinite While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair Beats tempered music and its lead subserves.

Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare, Divinely raised by that in her divine, Not the clear sight of Earth's blunt actual swerves When her lost look, as on a wave of wine, Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries Caress with folds and curves The fortress over Rhine, Beneath the one tall spire.

Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs, Her anguish in desire, She sees, above the brutish paw Alert on her still quivering limb - As little in past time she saw, Nor when dispieced as prey, As victrix when abhorred - A Grand Germania, stout on soil; Audacious up the ethereal dim; The forest's Infant; the strong hand for toil; The patient brain in twilights when astray; Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil; The sceptic and devout; the potent sword; With will and armed to help in hewing way For Europe's march; and of the most golden chord Of the Heliconian lyre Excellent mistress. Yea, she sees, and can admire; Still seeing in what walks the Gallia leads; And with what shield upon Alsace-Lorraine Her wary sister's doubtful look misreads A mother's throbs for her lost: so loved: so near: Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer, The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain.

For the belted Overshadower hard the course, On whom devolves the spirit's touchstone, Force: Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined, That too much adamantine makes the mind; Forgets it coin of Nature's rich Exchange; Contracts horizons within present sight: Amalekite to-day, across its range Indisputable; to-morrow Simeonite.

X

The mother who gave birth to Jeanne; Who to her young Angelical sprang; Who lay with Earth and heard the notes she sang, And heard her truest sing them; she may reach Heights yet unknown of nations; haply teach A thirsting world to learn 'tis 'she who can.'

She that in History's Heliaea pleads The nation flowering conscience o'er the beast; With heart expurged of rancour, tame of greeds; With the winged mind from fang and claw released; - Will such a land be seen? It will be seen; - Shall stand adjudged our foremost and Earth's Queen.

Acknowledgement that she of G.o.d proceeds The invisible makes visible, as his priest, To her is yielded by a world reclaimed.

And stands she mutilated, fancy-shamed, Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control, Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed, Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul; - My faith in her when she lay low Was fountain; now as wave at flow Beneath the lights, my faith in G.o.d is best; - On France has come the test Of what she holds within Responsive to Life's deeper springs.

She above the nations blest In fruitful and in liveliest, In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings, The devotee of Glory, she may win Glory despoiling none, enrich her kind, Illume her land, and take the royal seat Unto the strong self-conqueror a.s.signed.

But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name, Humanity's old Foeman winks agrin.

Her constant Angel eyes her heart's quick beat, The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame.

Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat.

Our Europe, vowed to unity or torn, Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn, And in a ruddy beacon mark an end That for the flock in their grave hearing rings.

Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet, Sprung from the Aetna pa.s.sions' mad revolts, Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend; And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat Antic.i.p.ating tempest and the bolts, Hangs curtained terrors round her next day's door, Death's emblems for the breast of Europe flings; The breast that waits a spark to fire her store.

Shall, then, the great vitality, France, Signal the backward step once more; Again a G.o.ddess Fortune trace Amid the Deities, and pledge to chance One whom we never could replace?

Now may she tune her nature's many strings To n.o.ble harmony, be seen, be known.

It was the foreign France, the unruly, feared; Little for all her witcheries endeared; Theatrical of arrogance, a sprite With gaseous vapours overblown, In her conceit of power ensphered, Foredoomed to violate and atone; Her the grim conqueror's iron might Avengeing clutched, distrusting rent; Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud; Not virtual France, the France benevolent, The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime; Though perilously instrument, A breast for any having G.o.dlike gleam.

This France could no antagonist disesteem, To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood.

Albeit a waverer between heart and mind, And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood, Which wither all the wreath when intertwined, This cherishable France she may redeem.

Beloved of Earth, her heart should feel at length How much unto Earth's offspring it doth owe.

Obstructions are for levelling, have we strength; 'Tis poverty of soul conceived a foe.

Rejected be the wrath that keeps unhealed Her panting wound; to higher Courts appealed The wrongs discerned of higher: Europe waits: She chooses G.o.d or gambles with the Fates.

Shines the new Helen in Alsace-Lorraine, A darker river severs Rhine and Rhone, Is heard a deadlier Epic of the twain; We see a Paris burn Or France Napoleon.

For yet he breathes whom less her heart forswears While trembles its desire to thwart her mind: The Tyrant lives in Victory's return.

What figure with recurrent footstep fares Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud, To sow her future from an ashen urn By lantern-light, as dragons' teeth are sown?

Of bleeding pride the piercing seer is blind.

But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud Distorting her true features, to be shown Benignly luminous, one who bears Humanity at breast, and she might learn How surely the excelling generous find Renouncement is possession. Sure As light enkindles light when heavenly earthly mates, The flame of pure immits the flame of pure, Magnanimous magnanimous creates.

So to majestic beauty stricken rears Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow; And men are in the secret with the spheres, Whose glory is celestially to bestow.

Now nation looks to nation, that may live Their common nurseling, like the torrent's flower, Shaken by foul Destruction's fast-piled heap.

On France is laid the proud initiative Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour, Whereby more than her lost one will she reap; Perchance the very lost regain, To count it less than her superb reward.

Our Europe, where is debtor each to each, Pa.s.s measure of excess, and war is Cain, Fraternal from the Seaman's beach, From answering Rhine in grand accord, From Neva beneath Northern cloud, And from our Transatlantic Europe loud, Will hail the rare example for their theme; Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze; In their entrusted nurseling know them one: Like a brave vessel under press of steam, Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas, Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun, Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme, Have sight of haven and the crowded quays.

THE CAGEING OF ARES

[Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]

How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed At sight of her boy Giants on the leap Each over other as they neighboured home, Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.

Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, It signalled some adventurous master-trick To set Olympians buzzing in debate, Lest it might be their G.o.dhead undermined, The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high On shoulders of his brother Otos waved For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, Burst the hot story out of throats of both, Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam Of gra.s.s and the river's crooks and snaky coils, Signification marvellous she caught, Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last Subsided, and the serious naked deed, With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, These two made up of lion, bear and fox, Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, Still by the reckoning infants among men, Had done the deed to strike the t.i.tan host In envy dumb, in envious heart elate: These two combining strength and craft had snared, Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War; Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes; The barren furrower of anointed fields; The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth When they had seized on his implacable spear, Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite His G.o.dlike fury startled from amaze.

For he had eyed them nearing him in play, The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there On Earth's original fisticuffs they called For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the G.o.d, Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, Good servitors of Ares they would be, And ply the pointed spear to dominate Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced Amusedly he watched them, and as one The l.u.s.ty twain were on him and they had him.

Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!

c.o.c.k of Olympus he, superb in plumes!

Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!

Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; A desolating fire to blind the sight With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.

Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look - Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the G.o.ds to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!

Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, And shatter earth's delirious holiday, Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, Resolving to composure on its throbs.

But see her in the Seasons through that year; That one glad year and the fair opening month.

Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!

War with her, gentle war with her, each day Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won, From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, Her ready secret: the abounding life Returned for valiant labour: she and they Defeated and victorious turn by turn; By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.

Exchange of powers of this conflict came; Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.

Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned, As music unto the hand that smote the strings; And she the rosier from their showery brows, They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.

Back to the primal rational of those Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp Stability in hatred of the insane, Man stepped; with wits less fearful to p.r.o.nounce The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced Above; those beautiful, those masterful, Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?

Earth in her happy children asked that word, Whereto within their breast was her reply.

Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years; Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced, And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled The Tyranny. This her voice within them told, When softly the Great Mother chid her sons Not of the giant brood, who did create Those lawless G.o.ds, first offspring of our brain Set moving by an abject blood, that waked To wanton under elements more benign, And planted aliens on Olympian heights; - Imagination's cradle poesy Become a monstrous pressure upon men; - Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed By light from her, born of the love of her, Their lordship the illumined brain rejects For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her other name. So spake she in their heart, Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, Confidently to cling. And when brown corn Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss; When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth; The very eye of pa.s.sion drowsed by excess, And yet a burning lion for the spring; Then in that time of general cherishment, Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, Then did good Gaea's children gratefully Lift hymns to G.o.ds they judged, but praised for peace, Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call Harmoniously and images her Law; Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, In memories made present on the brain By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes; The picture of an earth allied to heaven; Between them the known smile behind black masks; Rightly their various moods interpreted; And frolic because toilful children borne With larger comprehension of Earth's aim At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.

THE NIGHT-WALK

Awakes for me and leaps from shroud All radiantly the moon's own night Of folded showers in streamer cloud; Our shadows down the highway white Or deep in woodland woven-boughed, With yon and yon a stem alight.

I see marauder runagates Across us shoot their dusky wink; I hear the parliament of chats In haws beside the river's brink; And drops the vole off alder-banks, To push his arrow through the stream.

These busy people had our thanks For tickling sight and sound, but theme They were not more than breath we drew Delighted with our world's embrace: The moss-root smell where beeches grew, And watered gra.s.s in breezy s.p.a.ce; The silken heights, of ghostly bloom Among their folds, by distance draped.

'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, That cried to have its chaos shaped: Absorbing, little noting, still Enriched, and thinking it bestowed; With wistful looks on each far hill For something hidden, something owed.

Unto his mantled sister, Day Had given the secret things we sought And she was grave and saintly gay; At times she fluttered, spoke her thought; She flew on it, then folded wings, In meditation pa.s.sing lone, To breathe around the secret things, Which have no word, and yet are known; Of thirst for them are known, as air Is health in blood: we gained enough By this to feel it honest fare; Impalpable, not barren, stuff.

A pride of legs in motion kept Our spirits to their task meanwhile, And what was deepest dreaming slept: The posts that named the swallowed mile; Beside the straight ca.n.a.l the hut Abandoned; near the river's source Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; The roadway missed; were our discourse; At times dear poets, whom some view Transcendent or subdued evoked To speak the memorable, the true, The luminous as a moon uncloaked; For proof that there, among earth's dumb, A soul had pa.s.sed and said our best.

Or it might be we chimed on some Historic favourite's astral crest, With part to reverence in its gleam, And part to rivalry the shout: So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream Of power within to strike without.

But most the silences were sweet, Like mothers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to bid it feel It lived in such divine conceit As envies aught we stamp for real.

To either then an untold tale Was Life, and author, hero, we.

The chapters holding peaks to scale, Or depths to fathom, made our glee; For we were armed of inner fires, Unbled in us the ripe desires; And pa.s.sion rolled a quiet sea, Whereon was Love the phantom sail.

AT THE CLOSE