Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

      The senses loving Earth or well or ill

      Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot.

      The mind is in their trammels, and lights not

      By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will

      To find in nature things which less may chill

      An ardour that desires, unknowing what.

      Till we conceive her living we go distraught,

      At best but circle-windsails of a mill.

      Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life

      Creatively has given us blood and breath

      For endless war and never wound unhealed,

      The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field

      Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife

      To read her own and trust her down to death.

      Not solitarily in fields we find

      Earth’s secret open, though one page is there;

      Her plainest, such as children spell, and share

      With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind.

      Not where the troubled passions toss the mind,

      In turbid cities, can the key be bare.

      It hangs for those who hither thither fare,

      Close interthreading nature with our kind.

      They, hearing History speak, of what men were,

      And have become, are wise.  The gain is great

      In vision and solidity; it lives.

      Yet at a thought of life apart from her,

      Solidity and vision lose their state,

      For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.

      Assured of worthiness we do not dread

      Competitors; we rather give them hail

      And greeting in the lists where we may fail:

      Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head!

      My betters are my masters: purely fed

      By their sustainment I likewise shall scale

      Some rocky steps between the mount and vale;

      Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed.

      So that I draw the breath of finer air,

      Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn,

      Nor rivals tightly belted for the race.

      Good speed to them!  My place is here or there;

      My pride is that among them I have place:

      And thus I keep this instrument in tune.

      Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she

      I love fills daily, mindful but of one:

      And close behind pale morn she, like the sun

      Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see,

      Clear water in the cup, and into me

      The image of herself: and that being done,

      Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run

      In climbers or in creepers or the tree

      She ranges with unerring fingers fine,

      To harmony so vivid that through sight

      I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold

      Beyond the senses, where such love as mine,

      Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold

      Their starry more from her and me, unite.

      Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared,

      Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born:

      And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn

      At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared;

      To none by her fresh wingedness endeared;

      Unwelcome unto revellers outworn.

      I the last echoes of Diana’s horn

      In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered.

      No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul!

      And more than simple duty moved thy feet.

      New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame,

      From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll

      May men read on the heart I taught to beat:

      That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim.

      Rich labour is the struggle to be wise,

      While we make sure the struggle cannot cease.

      Else better were it in some bower of peace

      Slothful to swing, contending with the flies.

      You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies,

      As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece:

      She falls.  To live and shine, she grows her fleece,

      Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies.

      So following her, your hewing may attain

      The right to speak unto the mute, and shun

      That sly temptation of the illumined brain,

      Deliveries oracular, self-spun.

      Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain

      To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.

      Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg

      Honours from aught about thee.  Light the young.

      Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,

      O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.

      Thou art for this our life an ancient egg,

      Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue,

      Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung,

      Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg.

      Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires.

      But hast thou in thy season set her fires

      To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash,

      Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high:

      Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I

      Drops