Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

      She? no, her weakness: she unbraced

      Among those athletes fronting storms!

      The muscles less of steel than paste,

      Why, they of nature feel distaste

      For flash, much more for push, of arms.

      The poet sings, and well know we,

      That ‘iron draws men after it.’

      But towering wealth may seem the tree

      Which bears the fruit Indemnity,

      And draw as fast as battle’s fit,

      If feeble be the hand on guard,

      Alas, alas!  And nations are

      Still the mad forces, though the scarred.

      Should they once deem our emblem Pard

      Wagger of tail for all save war;—

      Mechanically screwed to flail

      His flanks by Presses conjuring fear;—

      A money-bag with head and tail;—

      Too late may valour then avail!

      As you beheld, my cannonier,

      When with the staff of Benedek,

      On the plateau of Königgrätz,

      You saw below that wedgeing speck;

      Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck,

      Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.

      Strike not thy dog with a stick!

         I did it yesterday:

      Not to undo though I gained

      The Paradise: heavy it rained

         On Kobold’s flanks, and he lay.

      Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,

         From his hunt had come back to my heel.

      I heard a sharp worrying sound,

      And Bruno foamed on the ground,

         With Koby as making a meal.

      I did what I could not undo

         Were the gates of the Paradise shut

      Behind me: I deemed it was just.

      I left Koby crouched in the dust,

         Some yards from the woodman’s hut.

      He bewhimpered his welting, and I

         Scarce thought it enough for him: so,

      By degrees, through the upper box-grove,

      Within me an old story hove,

         Of a man and a dog: you shall know.

      The dog was of novel breed,

         The Shannon retriever, untried:

      His master, an old Irish lord,

      In an oaken armchair snored

         At midnight, whisky beside.

      Perched up a desolate tower,

         Where the black storm-wind was a whip

      To set it nigh spinning, these two

      Were alone, like the last of a crew,

         Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.

      The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;

         He quitted his couch on the rug,

      Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;

      And, finding the signals unmarked,

         Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.

      He pulled till his master jumped

         For fury of wrath, and laid on

      With the length of a tough knotted staff,

      Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,

         And leave a sheer carcase anon.

      That done, he sat, panted, and cursed

         The vile cross of this brute: nevermore

      Would he house it to rear such a cur!

      The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,

         Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.

      Then his master raised head too, and sniffed:

         It struck him the dog had a sense

      That honoured both dam and sire.

      You have guessed how the tower was afire.

         The Shannon retriever dates thence.

      I mused: saw the pup ease his heart

         Of his instinct for chasing, and sink

      Overwrought by excitement so new:

      A scene that for Koby to view

         Was the seizure of nerves in a link.

      And part sympathetic, and part

         Imitatively, raged my poor brute;

      And I, not thinking of ill,

      Doing eviller: nerves are still

         Our savage too quick at the root.

      They spring us: I proved it, albeit

         I played executioner then

      For discipline, justice, the like.

      Yon stick I had handy to strike

         Should have warned of the tyrant in men.

      You read in your History books,

         How the Prince in his youth had a mind

      For governing gently his land.

      Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,

         When the temper is other than kind!

      At home all was well; Koby’s ribs

         Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,

      He forgives me, his criminal air

      Throws a shade of Llewellyn’s despair

         For the hound slain for saving his child.

      Enter these enchanted woods,

         You who dare.

      Nothing harms beneath the leaves

      More than waves a swimmer cleaves.

      Toss