A Reading of Life, with Other Poems. George Meredith

      The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.

      Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent,

      Her form is given to pardoned sight,

      And lets our mortal eyes receive

      The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;

      Adored by them who solitarily pace,

      In dusk of the underworld’s perpetual eve,

      The paths among the meadow asphodel,

      Remembering.  Never there her face

      Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell

      Around such whiteness the enamoured air

      Of noon that clothes her, never there.

      Daughter of light, the joyful light,

      She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,

      Sweet in her disregard of aid

      Divine to conquer or persuade.

      A fountain jets from moss; a flower

      Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.

      By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen

      With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen.

      Shorn of attendant Graces she can use

      Her natural snares to make her will supreme.

      A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse

      Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:

      One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;

      Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way

      A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,

      Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.

      The bud of fresh virginity awaits

      The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:

      She touches on the hour of happy mates;

      Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

      And while commanding blissful sight believe

      It holds her as a body strained to breast,

      Down on the underworld’s perpetual eve

      She plunges the possessor dispossessed;

      And bids believe that image, heaving warm,

      Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;

      The phantom any breeze blows out of form;

      A thirst’s delusion, a defeated aim.

      The rapture shed the torture weaves;

      The direst blow on human heart she deals:

      The pain to know the seen deceives;

      Nought true but what insufferably feels.

      And stabs of her delicious note,

      That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard

      Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,

      We answer as the midnight’s morning’s bird.

      She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;

      In her delicious laughter part revealed;

      Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,

      For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.

      Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:

      Yon folded couples, passing under shade,

      Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,

      Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.

      We dolorous complainers had a dream,

      Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,

      We saw stand bare of her celestial beam

      The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

      Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips

      Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;

      And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips

      She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.

      Blush of our being between birth and death:

      Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:

      Her wily semblance nought of her denies;

      Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,

      The generous Goddess yields.  And she can arm

      Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;

      Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.

      Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.

      But scorn she has for them that walk alone;

      Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.

      The men as chief of criminals she disdains,

      And holds the reason in perceptive thought.

      More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,

      Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.

      Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,

      Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,

      In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:

      Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes

      For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.

      Comes there a tremor of night’s forest horn

      Across her garden from the insaner crew,

      She darkens to malignity of scorn.

      A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:

      Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,

      The hunter’s shouts, are heard afar, and bring

      Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.

      These, the irreverent of Life’s design,

      Division between natural and divine

      Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,

      In veins of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest;

      And these because the roses flood their cheeks,

      Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.

      With them is war; and well the Goddess knows

      What undermines the race who mount the rose;

      How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,

      Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:

      Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,

      The strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs,

      And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.

      They who her sway withstand a sea defy,

      At every point of juncture must be proof;

      Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge

      Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge

      For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.

      She, tenderness, is pitiless to them

      Resisting in her godhead nature’s truth.

      No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;

      Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.

      These miserably disinclined,

      The