Poems. Volume 1. George Meredith

visits these, traversing each;

      They ripen to the common sun;

      Thro’ diverse forms and different speech,

      The world’s humanity is one.

      O may her voice have power to say

      How soon the wrecking discords cease,

      When every wandering wave is gay

      With golden argosies of peace!

      Now when the ark of human fate,

      Long baffled by the wayward wind,

      Is drifting with its peopled freight,

      Safe haven on the heights to find;

      Safe haven from the drowning slime

      Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath;—

      To plant again the foot of Time

      Upon a purer, firmer path;

      ’Tis now the hour to probe the ground,

      To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,

      The fathoms of the deep to sound,

      And send abroad the missioned bird,

      On strengthened wing for evermore,

      Let Science, swiftly as she can,

      Fly seaward on from shore to shore,

      And bind the links of man to man;

      And like that fair propitious Dove

      Bless future fleets about to launch;

      Make every freight a freight of love,

      And every ship an Olive Branch.

      SONG

      Love within the lover’s breast

      Burns like Hesper in the west,

      O’er the ashes of the sun,

      Till the day and night are done;

      Then when dawn drives up her car—

      Lo! it is the morning star.

      Love! thy love pours down on mine

      As the sunlight on the vine,

      As the snow-rill on the vale,

      As the salt breeze in the sail;

      As the song unto the bird,

      On my lips thy name is heard.

      As a dewdrop on the rose

      In thy heart my passion glows,

      As a skylark to the sky

      Up into thy breast I fly;

      As a sea-shell of the sea

      Ever shall I sing of thee.

      THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

      The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;

      It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;

      And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,

      Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.

      The sun’s betrothing kiss it never knows,

      Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;

      But ever in a placid, pure repose,

      More like a spirit with its look serene,

      Droops its pale cheek veined thro’ with infant green.

      Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,

      Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;

      The year’s own darling and the Summer’s Queen!

      Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.

      Much of that early prophet look she shows,

      Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,

      As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;

      Like a soft evening over sunset snows,

      Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.

      Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair

      In all that glads the eye and charms the air;

      In all that wakes emotions in the mind

      And sows sweet sympathies for human kind.

      Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,

      They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;

      Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,

      Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!

      For each, fulfilling nature’s law, fulfils

      Itself and its own aspirations pure;

      Living and dying; letting faith ensure

      New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.

      Each perfect in its place; and each content

      With that perfection which its being meant:

      Divided not by months that intervene,

      But linked by all the flowers that bud between.

      Forever smiling thro’ its season brief,

      The one in glory and the one in grief:

      Forever painting to our museful sight,

      How lowlihead and loveliness unite.

      Born from the first blind yearning of the earth

      To be a mother and give happy birth,

      Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,

      Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;

      And ere the snows have melted from the grass,

      And not a strip of greensward doth appear,

      Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,

      Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass!

      While in the ripe enthronement of the year,

      Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air

      With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath,—

      Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,

      And starr’d with dews upon her forehead clear,

      Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be

      Who takes the land’s devotion as her fee,—

      The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,

      Nature’s most beautiful and perfect flower.

      THE DEATH OF WINTER

      When April with her wild blue eye

         Comes dancing over the grass,

      And all the crimson buds so shy

         Peep out to see her pass;

      As lightly she loosens her showery locks

         And flutters her rainy wings;

            Laughingly stoops

               To the glass of the stream,

            And loosens and loops

               Her hair by the gleam,

      While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks

         Go frolicking round in rings;—

      Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,

      Turns on his back and prepares to die,

      For he cannot live longer under the sky.

      Down