Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

his poor tenants, harmless ones,

      With souls to save! fed not on buns,

      But angry meats: she took her place

      Outside to show the way to grace.

XXIV

      In apron suit the Bishop stood;

      The crowding people kindly viewed.

      A gaunt grey woman he saw rise

      On air, with most beseeching eyes:

      And evident as light in dark

      It was, she set to him for mark.

XXV

      Her highest leap had come: with ease

      She jumped to reach the Bishop’s knees:

      Compressing tight her arms and lips,

      She sought to jump the Bishop’s hips:

      Her aim flew at his apron-band,

      That he might see and understand.

XXVI

      The mild inquiry of his gaze

      Was altered to a peaked amaze,

      At sight of thirty in ascent,

      To gain his notice clearly bent:

      And greatly Jane at heart was vexed

      By his ploughed look of mind perplexed.

XXVII

      In jumps that said, Beware the pit!

      More eloquent than speaking it—

      That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast;

      The heated nose on face of ghost,

      Which comes of drinking: up and o’er

      The flesh with me! did Jane implore.

XXVIII

      She jumped him high as huntsmen go

      Across the gate; she jumped him low,

      To coax him to begin and feel

      His infant steps returning, peel

      His mortal pride, exposing fruit,

      And off with hat and apron suit.

XXIX

      We need much patience, well she knew,

      And out and out, and through and through,

      When we would gentlefolk address,

      However we may seek to bless:

      At times they hide them like the beasts

      From sacred beams; and mostly priests.

XXX

      He gave no sign of making bare,

      Nor she of faintness or despair.

      Inflamed with hope that she might win,

      If she but coaxed him to begin,

      She used all arts for making fain;

      The mother with her babe was Jane.

XXXI

      Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not

      Her business, waved her from the spot.

      Encircled by the men of might,

      The head of Jane, like flickering light,

      As in a charger, they beheld

      Ere she was from the park expelled.

XXXII

      Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,

      Did Jane around communicate:

      For that the moment when began

      The holy but mistaken man,

      In view of light, to take his lift,

      They cut him from her charm adrift!

XXXIII

      And he was lost: a banished face

      For ever from the ways of grace,

      Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.

      They saw the Bishop’s wavering sprite

      Within her look, at come and go,

      Long after he had caused her woe.

XXXIV

      Her greying eyes (until she sank

      At Fredsham on the wayside bank,

      Like cinder heaps that whitened lie

      From coals that shot the flame to sky)

      Had glassy vacancies, which yearned

      For one in memory discerned.

XXXV

      May those who ply the tongue that cheats,

      And those who rush to beer and meats,

      And those whose mean ambition aims

      At palaces and titled names,

      Depart in such a cheerful strain

      As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!

XXXVI

      Her end was beautiful: one sigh.

      She jumped a foot when it was nigh.

      A lily in a linen clout

      She looked when they had laid her out.

      It is a lily-light she bears

      For England up the ladder-stairs.

      THE RIDDLE FOR MEN

I

         This Riddle rede or die,

         Says History since our Flood,

         To warn her sons of power:—

      It can be truth, it can be lie;

      Be parasite to twist awry;

      The drouthy vampire for your blood;

      The fountain of the silver flower;

      A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;

      Supple of wax or tempered steel;

      The spur to honour, snake in nest:

      ’Tis as you will with it to deal;

         To wear upon the breast,

         Or trample under heel.

II

         And rede you not aright,

         Says Nature, still in red

         Shall History’s tale be writ!

      For solely thus you lead to light

      The trailing chapters she must write,

      And pass my fiery test of dead

      Or living through the furnace-pit:

      Dislinked from who the softer hold

      In grip of brute, and brute remain:

      Of whom the woeful tale is told,

      How for one short Sultanic reign,

         Their bodies lapse to mould,

         Their souls behowl the plain.

      THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY

I

      One fairest of the ripe unwedded left

      Her shadow on the Sage’s path; he found,

      By common signs, that she had done a theft.

      He could have made the sovereign heights resound

      With questions of the wherefore of her state:

      He on far other but an hour before

      Intent.  And was it man, or was it mate,

      That