Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

      That was the chirp of Ariel

      You heard, as overhead it flew,

      The farther going more to dwell,

      And wing our green to wed our blue;

      But whether note of joy or knell,

      Not his own Father-singer knew;

      Nor yet can any mortal tell,

      Save only how it shivers through;

      The breast of us a sounded shell,

      The blood of us a lighted dew.

      His Lady queen of woods to meet,

         He wanders day and night:

      The leaves have whisperings discreet,

         The mossy ways invite.

      Across a lustrous ring of space,

         By covert hoods and caves,

      Is promise of her secret face

         In film that onward waves.

      For darkness is the light astrain,

         Astrain for light the dark.

      A grey moth down a larches’ lane

         Unwinds a ghostly spark.

      Her lamp he sees, and young desire

         Is fed while cloaked she flies.

      She quivers shot of violet fire

         To ash at look of eyes.

      Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank,

      Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!

         Quenched youth, and is that thy purse?

      Even such limp slough as the snake has left

      Slack to the gale upon spikes of whin,

      For cast-off coat of a life gone blank,

      In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine;

         And thine to crave and to curse

         The sweet thing once within.

      Accuse him: some devil committed the theft,

         Which leaves of the portly a skin,

         No more; of the weighty a whine.

      Pursue him: and first, to be sure of his track,

      Over devious ways that have led to this,

         In the stream’s consecutive line,

         Let memory lead thee back

      To where waves Morning her fleur-de-lys,

      Unflushed at the front of the roseate door

      Unopened yet: never shadow there

         Of a Tartarus lighted by Dis

         For souls whose cry is, alack!

      An ivory cradle rocks, apeep

      Through his eyelashes’ laugh, a breathing pearl.

      There the young chief of the animals wore

      A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware

      Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap.

      In a dingle away from a rutted highroad,

      Around him the earliest throstle and merle,

      Our human smile between milk and sleep,

         Effervescent of Nature he crowed.

      Fair was that season; furl over furl

      The banners of blossom; a dancing floor

      This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair

      Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast:

      Careless, a centre of vigilant care.

      Thy mother kisses an infant curl.

      The room of the toys was a boundless nest,

         A kingdom the field of the games,

         Till entered the craving for more,

         And the worshipped small body had aims.

      A good little idol, as records attest,

      When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream

      By sweets and caresses: he gave but sign

      That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race,

      Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine.

      Almost magician, his earliest dream

         Was lord of the unpossessed

         For a look; himself and his chase,

         As on puffs of a wind at whirl,

         Made one in the wink of a gleam.

         She kisses a locket curl,

      She conjures to vision a cherub face,

         When her butterfly counted his day

         All meadow and flowers, mishap

         Derided, and taken for play

         The fling of an urchin’s cap.

      When her butterfly showed him an eaglet born,

         For preying too heedlessly bred,

         What a heart clapped in thee then!

         With what fuller colours of morn!

      And high to the uttermost heavens it flew,

         Swift as on poet’s pen.

         It flew to be wedded, to wed

         The mystery scented around:

         Issue of flower and dew,

         Issue of light and sound:

         Thinner than either; a thread

         Spun of the dream they threw

         To kindle, allure, evade.

      It ran the sea-wave, the garden’s dance,

      To the forest’s dark heart down a dappled glade;

         Led on by a perishing glance,

         By a twinkle’s eternal waylaid.

      Woman, the name was, when she took form;

      Sheaf of the wonders of life.  She fled,

      Close imaged; she neared, far seen.  How she made

      Palpitate earth of the living and dead!

      Did she not show thee the world designed

      Solely for loveliness?  Nested warm,

      The day was the morrow in flight.  And for thee,

      She muted the discords, tuned, refined;

      Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak.

      Eye of the waters, and throb of the tree,

      Sliding on radiance, winging from shade,

      With her witch-whisper o’er ruins, in