Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

to veterans of the fair,

      Who show for a convolving pearly shell,

      A treasure of the shore, their written book.

      As much as woman’s breath will bear and live

      Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look,

      That held as if for grain the summing sieve.

      Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes

      Our homely daylight after dread of spells.

      Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes

      Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells

      About a story of the naked flesh,

      Intending but to put some garment on,

      Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh,

      A traitor lurks and will be known anon.

      Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,

      Stationed for index down an ancient track:

      And ware of it was he while she poured out

      A broken moon on forest-waters black.

      Though past the stage where midway men are skilled

      To scan their senses wriggling under plough,

      When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled,

      Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,

      Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,

      Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed

      Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech,

      The valour of that rawness he could read.

      Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran

      From senses up to thoughts, how she had read

      Maternally the warm remainder man

      Beneath his crust, and Nature’s pity shed,

      In shedding dearer than heart’s blood to light

      His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.

      Therewith he could espy Confession’s fright;

      Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks;

      They suck from soil, and have their urgencies

      Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves.

      Veins of divergencies, convergencies,

      Our botanist in womankind perceives;

      And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize

      That splendid consummation and sure proof

      Of more than heart in her, who might despise,

      Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof

      To soar and be like Nature’s pity: she

      Instinctive of what virtue in young days

      Had served him for his pilot-star on sea,

      To trouble him in haven.  Thus his gaze

      Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue

      Was gifted to encourage and assure.

      He gave her of the deep well she had sprung;

      And name it gratitude, the word is poor.

      But name it gratitude, is aught as rare

      From sex to sex?  And let it have survived

      Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair,

      Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived:

      Unknown to Passion, generous for prey:

      Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.

      Their tenderest of self did each one slay;

      His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce;

      Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,

      Things living, slew they, and no artery bled.

      A moment of some sacrificial smoke

      They passed, and were the dearer for their dead.

      He learnt how much we gain who make no claims.

      A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire

      Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames,

      Confessing; and its conjured image dire,

      Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed;

      The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force,

      Visioned to hold corrected and abashed

      Our senile emulous; which rolls its course

      Proud to the shattering end; with these few last

      Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice,

      Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!

      And still, though having skin for man’s abuse,

      Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath

      Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet,

      Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth

      Between the vivid lips; a vassal set;

      And numb, of formal value.  Are we true

      In nature, never natural thing repents;

      Albeit receiving punishment for due,

      Among the group of this world’s penitents;

      Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft

      Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.

      Our world believes it stabler if the soft

      Are whipped to show the face repentance wears.

      Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,

      Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;

      Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom

      The chasm between our passions and our wits!

      Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows,

      It trembles at betrayal of a sore.

      Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose

      Impurities for clearness at the core.

      She to her hungered thundering in breast,

      Ye shall not starve, not feebly designates

      The world repressing as a life repressed,

      Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates.

      How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian,

      Repents, she points for sight: and she avers,

      The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan

      Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters.

      Sin against immaturity, the sin

      Of ravenous excess, what deed divides

      Man from vitality; these bleed within;

      Bleed in the crippled relic that abides.

      Perpetually they bleed; a limb is lost,

      A piece of life, the very spirit maimed.

      But culprit who the law of man has crossed

      With Nature’s dubiously within is blamed;

      Despite our cry at cutting of the whip,

      Our shiver in the night when numbers frown,

      We but bewail a broken fellowship,

      A sting, an isolation, a fall’n crown.

      Abject of sinners is that sensitive,

      The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled

      Incorrigible: