Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

is thy gain now the surface is clear:

      To read with a soul in the mirror of mind

      Is man’s chief lesson.—Thou smilest!  I preach!

         Acid smiling, my friend, reveals

      Abysses within; frigid preaching a street

         Paved unconcernedly smooth

         For the lecturer straight on his heels,

         Up and down a policeman’s beat;

         Bearing tonics not labelled to soothe.

      Thou hast a disgust of the sermon in rhyme.

      It is not attractive in being too chaste.

      The popular tale of adventure and crime

      Would equally sicken an overdone taste.

      So, then, onward.  Philosophy, thoughtless to soothe,

      Lifts, if thou wilt, or there leaves thee supine.

      Thy condition, good sooth, has no seeming of sweet;

      It walks our first crags, it is flint for the tooth,

         For the thirsts of our nature brine.

      But manful has met it, manful will meet.

      And think of thy privilege: supple with youth,

         To have sight of the headlong swine,

         Once fouling thee, jumping the dips!

         As the coin of thy purse poured out:

         An animal’s holiday past:

      And free of them thou, to begin a new bout;

      To start a fresh hunt on a resolute blast:

      No more an imp-ridden to bournes of eclipse:

      Having knowledge to spur thee, a gift to compare;

      Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book

      Of the world can be read, by necessity urged.

      For witness, what blinkers are they who look

      From the state of the prince or the millionnaire!

         They see but the fish they attract,

         The hungers on them converged;

      And never the thought in the shell of the act,

         Nor ever life’s fangless mirth.

      But first, that the poisonous of thee be purged,

         Go into thyself, strike Earth.

      She is there, she is felt in a blow struck hard.

      Thou findest a pugilist countering quick,

      Cunning at drives where thy shutters are barred;

      Not, after the studied professional trick,

      Blue-sealing; she brightens the sight.  Strike Earth,

      Antaeus, young giant, whom fortune trips!

         And thou com’st on a saving fact,

         To nourish thy planted worth.

      Be it clay, flint, mud, or the rubble of chips,

      Thy roots have grasp in the stern-exact:

      The redemption of sinners deluded! the last

         Dry handful, that bruises and saves.

      To the common big heart are we bound right fast,

         When our Mother admonishing nips

         At the nakedness bare of a clout,

         And we crave what the commonest craves.

         This wealth was a fortress-wall,

      Under which grew our grim little beast-god stout;

      Self-worshipped, the foe, in division from all;

      With crowds of illogical Christians, no doubt;

         Till the rescuing earthquake cracked.

         Thus are we man made firm;

         Made warm by the numbers compact.

      We follow no longer a trumpet-snout,

         At a trot where the hog is tracked,

         Nor wriggle the way of the worm.

         Thou wilt spare us the cynical pout

      At humanity: sign of a nature bechurled.

         No stenchy anathemas cast

         Upon Providence, women, the world.

      Distinguish thy tempers and trim thy wits.

      The purchased are things of the mart, not classed

      Among resonant types that have freely grown.

      Thy knowledge of women might be surpassed:

      As any sad dog’s of sweet flesh when he quits

         The wayside wandering bone!

      No revilings of comrades as ingrates: thee

      The tempter, misleader, and criminal (screened

         By laws yet barbarous) own.

      If some one performed Fiend’s deputy,

         He was for awhile the Fiend.

         Still, nursing a passion to speak,

      As the punch-bowl does, in the moral vein,

         When the ladle has finished its leak,

      And the vessel is loquent of nature’s inane,

         Hie where the demagogues roar

      Like a Phalaris bull, with the victim’s force:

         Hurrah to their jolly attack

         On a City that smokes of the Plain;

         A city of sin’s death-dyes,

         Holding revel of worms in a corse;

         A city of malady sore,

         Over-ripe for the big doom’s crack:

         A city of hymnical snore;

         Connubial truths and lies

         Demanding an instant divorce,

         Clean as the bright from the black.

      It were well for thy system to sermonize.

      There are giants to slay, and they call for their Jack.

         Then up stand thou in the midst:

         Thy good grain out of thee thresh,

         Hand upon heart: relate

         What things thou legally didst

         For the Archseducer of flesh.

      Omitting the murmurs of women and fate,

         Confess thee an instrument armed

         To be snare of our wanton, our weak,

         Of all by the sensual charmed.

      For once shall repentance be done by the tongue:

         Speak, though execrate, speak

         A word on grandmotherly Laws

         Giving rivers of gold to our young,

      In the days of their hungers impure;

      To furnish them beak and claws,

      And make them a banquet’s lure.

         Thou the example, saved

      Miraculously by this poor skin!

         Thereat let the Purse be waved:

      The snake-slough sick of the