Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

      Ungrateful creatures crave a part—

      She tells them firmly she is full;

      Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart

      With bleating, stops her ears with wool:—

      Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms

      (Nightmares of bankruptcy and death),—

      Showers down in lumps a load of alms,

      Then pants as one who has lost a breath;

      Believes high heaven, whence favours flow,

      Too kind to ask a sacrifice

      For what it specially doth bestow;—

      Gives she, ’tis generous, cheese to mice.

      She saw the young Dominion strip

      For battle with a grievous wrong,

      And curled a noble Norman lip,

      And looked with half an eye sidelong;

      And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,

      Denounced the waste of blood and coin,

      Implored the combatants, with tears,

      Never to think they could rejoin.

      Oh! was it England that, alas!

      Turned sharp the victor to cajole?

      Behold her features in the glass:

      A monstrous semblance mocks her soul!

      A false majority, by stealth,

      Have got her fast, and sway the rod:

      A headless tyrant built of wealth,

      The hypocrite, the belly-God.

      To him the daily hymns they raise:

      His tastes are sought: his will is done:

      He sniffs the putrid steam of praise,

      Place for true England here is none!

      But can a distant race discern

      The difference ’twixt her and him?

      My friend, that will you bid them learn.

      He shames and binds her, head and limb.

      Old wood has blossoms of this sort.

      Though sound at core, she is old wood.

      If freemen hate her, one retort

      She has; but one!—‘You are my blood.’

      A poet, half a prophet, rose

      In recent days, and called for power.

      I love him; but his mountain prose—

      His Alp and valley and wild flower—

      Proclaimed our weakness, not its source.

      What medicine for disease had he?

      Whom summoned for a show of force?

      Our titular aristocracy!

      Why, these are great at City feasts;

      From City riches mainly rise:

      ’Tis well to hear them, when the beasts

      That die for us they eulogize!

      But these, of all the liveried crew

      Obeisant in Mammon’s walk,

      Most deferent ply the facial screw,

      The spinal bend, submissive talk.

      Small fear that they will run to books

      (At least the better form of seed)!

      I, too, have hoped from their good looks,

      And fables of their Northman breed;—

      Have hoped that they the land would head

      In acts magnanimous; but, lo,

      When fainting heroes beg for bread

      They frown: where they are driven they go.

      Good health, my friend! and may your lot

      Be cheerful o’er the Western rounds.

      This butter-woman’s market-trot

      Of verse is passing market-bounds.

      Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone.

      On banks of fog faint lines extend:

      Adieu! bring back a braver dawn

      To England, and to me my friend.

      I see a fair young couple in a wood,

      And as they go, one bends to take a flower,

      That so may be embalmed their happy hour,

      And in another day, a kindred mood,

      Haply together, or in solitude,

      Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,

      The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,

      Wherewith by their young blood they are endued

      To move all enviable, framed in May,

      And of an aspect sisterly with Truth:

      Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed:

      Who will be prompted on some pallid day

      To lift the hueless flower and show that dead,

      Even such, and by this token, is their youth.

      On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.

      Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend

      Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,

      Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.

      Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.

      And now upon his western wing he leaned,

      Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,

      Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.

      Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars

      With memory of the old revolt from Awe,

      He reached a middle height, and at the stars,

      Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.

      Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,

      The army of unalterable law.

      Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales

      To dotlings under moonlight still art keen

      With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien

      Who holds in his