Poems. Volume 1. George Meredith

      There stands a singer in the street,

      He has an audience motley and meet;

      Above him lowers the London night,

      And around the lamps are flaring bright.

      His minstrelsy may be unchaste—

      ’Tis much unto that motley taste,

      And loud the laughter he provokes

      From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.

      But woe is many a passer by

      Who as he goes turns half an eye,

      To see the human form divine

      Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!

      Make up the sum of either sex

      That all our human hopes perplex,

      With those unhappy shapes that know

      The silent streets and pale cock-crow.

      And can I trace in such dull eyes

      Of fireside peace or country skies?

      And could those haggard cheeks presume

      To memories of a May-tide bloom?

      Those violated forms have been

      The pride of many a flowering green;

      And still the virgin bosom heaves

      With daisy meads and dewy leaves.

      But stygian darkness reigns within

      The river of death from the founts of sin;

      And one prophetic water rolls

      Its gas-lit surface for their souls.

      I will not hide the tragic sight—

      Those drown’d black locks, those dead lips white,

      Will rise from out the slimy flood,

      And cry before God’s throne for blood!

      Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face,—

      Pollution’s last and best embrace,

      Will call, as such a picture can,

      For retribution upon man.

      Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,

      While still the ballad-monger sings,

      And flatters their unhappy breasts

      With poisonous words and pungent jests.

      O how would every daisy blush

      To see them ’mid that earthy crush!

      O dumb would be the evening thrush,

      And hoary look the hawthorn bush!

      The meadows of their infancy

      Would shrink from them, and every tree,

      And every little laughing spot,

      Would hush itself and know them not.

      Precursor to what black despairs

      Was that child’s face which once was theirs!

      And O to what a world of guile

      Was herald that young angel smile!

      That face which to a father’s eye

      Was balm for all anxiety;

      That smile which to a mother’s heart

      Went swifter than the swallow’s dart!

      O happy homes! that still they know

      At intervals, with what a woe

      Would ye look on them, dim and strange,

      Suffering worse than winter change!

      And yet could I transplant them there,

      To breathe again the innocent air

      Of youth, and once more reconcile

      Their outcast looks with nature’s smile;

      Could I but give them one clear day

      Of this delicious loving May,

      Release their souls from anguish dark,

      And stand them underneath the lark;—

      I think that Nature would have power

      To graft again her blighted flower

      Upon the broken stem, renew

      Some portion of its early hue;—

      The heavy flood of tears unlock,

      More precious than the Scriptured rock;

      At least instil a happier mood,

      And bring them back to womanhood.

      Alas! how many lost ones claim

      This refuge from despair and shame!

      How many, longing for the light,

      Sink deeper in the abyss this night!

      O, crying sin!  O, blushing thought!

      Not only unto those that wrought

      The misery and deadly blight;

      But those that outcast them this night!

      O, agony of grief! for who

      Less