Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

as a finger of smoke

      Astream over woodland.  And was not she

      History’s heroines white on storm?

      Remember her summons to valorous deeds.

      Shone she a lure of the honey-bag swarm,

      Most was her beam on the knightly: she led

      For the honours of manhood more than the prize;

         Waved her magnetical yoke

         Whither the warrior bled,

         Ere to the bower of sighs.

      And shy of her secrets she was; under deeps

      Plunged at the breath of a thirst that woke

      The dream in the cave where the Dreaded sleeps.

      Away over heaven the young heart flew,

      And caught many lustres, till some one said

      (Or was it the thought into hearing grew?),

         Not thou as commoner men!

         Thy stature puffed and it swayed,

         It stiffened to royal-erect;

         A brassy trumpet brayed;

         A whirling seized thy head;

         The vision of beauty was flecked.

         Note well the how and the when,

         The thing that prompted and sped.

         Thereanon the keen passions clapped wing,

         Fixed eye, and the world was prey.

      No simple world of thy greenblade Spring,

         Nor world of thy flowerful prime

         On the topmost Orient peak

         Above a yet vaporous day.

         Flesh was it, breast to beak:

      A four-walled windowless world without ray,

      Only darkening jets on a river of slime,

      Where harsh over music as woodland jay,

         A voice chants, Woe to the weak!

         And along an insatiate feast,

         Women and men are one

         In the cup transforming to beast.

      Magian worship they paid to their sun,

      Lord of the Purse!  Behold him climb.

         Stalked ever such figure of fun

      For monarch in great-grin pantomime?

      See now the heart dwindle, the frame distend;

      The soul to its anchorite cavern retreat,

      From a life that reeks of the rotted end;

      While he—is he pictureable? replete,

      Gourd-like swells of the rank of the soil,

         Hollow, more hollow at core.

         And for him did the hundreds toil

         Despised; in the cold and heat,

         This image ridiculous bore

         On their shoulders for morsels of meat!

      Gross, with the fumes of incense full,

      With parasites tickled, with slaves begirt,

      He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull,

         He rolled him, a dog, in dirt.

      And dog, bull, cook, was he, fanged, horned, plumed;

      Original man, as philosophers vouch;

      Carnivorous, cannibal; length-long exhumed,

      Frightfully living and armed to devour;

      The primitive weapons of prey in his pouch;

         The bait, the line and the hook:

         To feed on his fellows intent.

         God of the Danaé shower,

         He had but to follow his bent.

      He battened on fowl not safely hutched,

         On sheep astray from the crook;

         A lure for the foolish in fold:

      To carrion turning what flesh he touched.

         And O the grace of his air,

         As he at the goblet sips,

         A centre of girdles loosed,

         With their grisly label, Sold!

      Credulous hears the fidelity swear,

      Which has roving eyes over yielded lips:

      To-morrow will fancy himself the seduced,

         The stuck in a treacherous slough,

      Because of his faith in a purchased pair,

         False to a vinous vow.

      In his glory of banquet strip him bare,

         And what is the creature we view?

      Our pursy Apollo Apollyon’s tool;

         A small one, still of the crew

         By serpent Apollyon blest:

      His plea in apology, blindfold Fool.

      A fool surcharged, propelled, unwarned;

         Not viler, you hear him protest:

      Of a popular countenance not incorrect.

      But deeds are the picture in essence, deeds

         Paint him the hooved and homed,

         Despite the poor pother he pleads,

         And his look of a nation’s elect.

         We have him, our quarry confessed!

         And scan him: the features inspect

         Of that bestial multiform: cry,

      Corroborate I, O Samian Sage!

         The book of thy wisdom, proved

         On me, its last hieroglyph page,

         Alive in the horned and hooved?

         Thou! will he make reply.

         Thus has the plenary purse

         Done often: to do will engage

      Anew upon all of thy like, or worse.

         And now is thy deepest regret

         To be man, clean rescued from beast:

         From the grip of the Sorcerer, Gold,

         Celestially released.

         But now from his cavernous hold,

         Free may thy soul be set,

      As a child of the Death and the Life, to learn,

         Refreshed by some bodily sweat,

         The meaning of either in turn,

         What issue may come of the two:—

      A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach

      Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold:

      A firmament passing our visible blue.

      To those having nought to reflect it, ’tis nought;

      To those who are misty, ’tis mist on the beach

      From the billow withdrawing; to those who see

         Earth, our mother, in thought,

         Her spirit it is, our key.

      Ay, the Life