A Reading of Life, with Other Poems. George Meredith

      Or shall we run with Artemis

      Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?

      Both are mighty;

      Both give bliss;

      Each can torture if divided;

      Each claims worship undivided,

      In her wake would have us wallow.

      Youth must offer on bent knees

      Homage unto one or other;

      Earth, the mother,

      This decrees;

      And unto the pallid Scyther

      Either points us shun we either

      Shun or too devoutly follow.

      Through the water-eye of night,

      Midway between eve and dawn,

      See the chase, the rout, the flight

      In deep forest; oread, faun,

      Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;

      Ravenous all the line for speed.

      See yon wavy sparkle beck

      Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead.

      Down her course a serpent star

      Coils and shatters at her heels;

      Peals the horn exulting, peals

      Plaintive, is it near or far.

      Huntress, arrowy to pursue,

      In and out of woody glen,

      Under cliffs that tear the blue,

      Over torrent, over fen,

      She and forest, where she skims

      Feathery, darken and relume:

      Those are her white-lightning limbs

      Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.

      Mountains hear her and call back,

      Shrewd with night: a frosty wail

      Distant: her the emerald vale

      Folds, and wonders in her track.

      Now her retinue is lean,

      Many rearward; streams the chase

      Eager forth of covert; seen

      One hot tide the rapturous race.

      Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,

      Up on a flash the lighted mound

      Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft

      Strung to barb with archer’s craft,

      Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet

      Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.

      Fearful swiftness they outrun,

      Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,

      Challenge, charge of tusks elude:

      Theirs the dance to tame the rude;

      Beast, and beast in manhood tame,

      Follow we their silver flame.

      Pride of flesh from bondage free,

      Reaping vigour of its waste,

      Marks her servitors, and she

      Sanctifies the unembraced.

      Nought of perilous she reeks;

      Valour clothes her open breast;

      Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;

      Hallowed by the sex confessed.

      Huntress arrowy to pursue,

      Colder she than sunless dew,

      She, that breath of upper air;

      Ay, but never lyrist sang,

      Draught of Bacchus never sprang

      Blood the bliss of Gods to share,

      High o’er sweep of eagle wings,

      Like the run with her, when rings

      Clear her rally, and her dart,

      In the forest’s cavern heart,

      Tells of her victorious aim.

      Then is pause and chatter, cheer,

      Laughter at some satyr lame,

      Looks upon the fallen deer,

      Measuring his noble crest;

      Here a favourite in her train,

      Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;

      All applauded.  Shall she reign

      Worshipped?  O to be with her there!

      She, that breath of nimble air,

      Lifts the breast to giant power.

      Maid and man, and man and maid,

      Who each other would devour

      Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,

      There are comrades, led by her,

      Maid-preserver, man-maker.

      Who murmurs, hither, hither: who

      Where nought is audible so fills the ear?

      Where nought is visible can make appear

      A veil with eyes that waver through,

      Like twilight’s pledge of blessed night to come,

      Or day most golden?  All unseen and dumb,

      She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,

      Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire

      To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,

      Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,

      Flame in a crystal vessel sails

      Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,

      For land that drops the rosy day

      On nights of throbbing nightingales.

      Landward did the wonder flit,

      Or heart’s desire of her, all earth in it.

      We saw the heavens fling down their rose;

      On rapturous waves we saw her glide;

      The pearly sea-shell half enclose;

      The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;

      And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more

      Behold than tracks along a startled shore,

      With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign

      An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

      More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,

      The very she called forth by ripened blood

      For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,

      Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,

      The stream within us urged to flood;

      Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O she,

      Maid, woman and divinity;

      Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate

      Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit

      Untasted; she our written fate

      Unread; Life’s flowering, Life’s root:

      Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;

      The evanescent, ever-present she,

      Great