Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud

      Capping a sullen crater: and mankind

      We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark,

      Because of thy straight leadership declined;

      At heels of this or that delusive spark:

      Now when the multitudinous races press

      Elbow to elbow hourly more,

      A thickened host; when now we hear aloud

      Life for the very life implore

      A signal of a visioned mark;

      Light of the mind, the mind’s discourse,

      The rational in graciousness,

      Thee by acknowledgement enthroned,

      To tame and lead that blind-eyed force

      In harmony of harness with the crowd,

      For payment of their dues; as yet disowned,

      Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowed

      To holy work, deems it the heart’s intent;

      Or where a silken circle views it cowled,

      The seeming figure of concordance, bent

      On satiating tyrant lust

      Or barren fits of sentiment.

      Thou wilt not have our paths befouled

      By simulation; are we vile to view,

      The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust,

      Beneath thy breezy flitting wing:

      They make their mirror upon faces true;

      And where they win reflection, lucid heave

      The under tides of this hot heart seen through.

      Beneficently wilt thou clip

      All oversteppings of the plumed,

      The puffed, and bid the masker strip,

      And into the crowned windbag thrust,

      Tearing the mortal from the vital thing,

      A lightning o’er the half-illumed,

      Who to base brute-dominion cleave,

      Yet mark effects, and shun the flash,

      Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive,