Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

Muse!  But she cried: Not of them

      She breathed as if breath had failed,

      And her eyes, while she bade him desist,

      Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,

      As you see the grey river-mist

      Hold shapes on the yonder bank.

      A moment her body waned,

      The light of her sprang and sank:

      Then she looked at the sun, she regained

      Clear feature, and she breathed deep.

      She wore the wan smile he had seen,

      As the flow of the river of Sleep,

      On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.

      In sunlight she craved to bask,

      Saying: Life!  And who was she? who?

      Of what issue?  He dared not ask,

         For that partly he knew.

VIII

      A noise of the hollow ground

      Turned the eye to the ear in debate:

      Not the soft overflowing of sound

      Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,

      Barely swayed to some whispers remote,

      Some swarming whispers above:

      Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,

      Hush-hushing the nested dove:

      It was not the pines, or the rout

      Oft heard from mid-forest in chase,

      But the long muffled roar of a shout

      Subterranean.  Sharp grew her face.

      She rose, yet not moved by affright;

      ’Twas rather good haste to use

      Her holiday of delight

      In the beams of the God of the Muse.

      And the steeps of the forest she crossed,

      On its dry red sheddings and cones

      Up the paths by roots green-mossed,

      Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.

      Then out where the brook-torrent starts

      To her leap, and from bend to curve

      A hurrying elbow darts

      For the instant-glancing swerve,

      Decisive, with violent will

      In the action formed, like hers,

      The maiden’s, ascending; and still

      Ascending, the bud of the furze,

      The broom, and all blue-berried shoots

      Of stubborn and prickly kind,

      The juniper flat on its roots,

      The dwarf rhododaphne, behind

      She left, and the mountain sheep

      Far behind, goat, herbage and flower.

      The island was hers, and the deep,

      All heaven, a golden hour.

      Then with wonderful voice, that rang

      Through air as the swan’s nigh death,

      Of the glory of Light she sang,

      She sang of the rapture of Breath.

      Nor ever, says he who heard,

      Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,

      From bosom of singer or bird

      A sweetness thus rich of the God

      Whose harmonies always are sane.

      She sang of furrow and seed,

      The burial, birth of the grain,

      The growth, and the showers that feed,

      And the green blades waxing mature

      For the husbandman’s armful brown.

      O, the song in its burden ran pure,

      And burden to song was a crown.

      Callistes, a singer, skilled

      In the gift he could measure and praise,

      By a rival’s art was thrilled,

      Though she sang but a Song of Days,

      Where the husbandman’s toil and strife

      Little varies to strife and toil:

      But the milky kernel of life,

      With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil

      The song did give him to eat:

      Gave the first rapt vision of Good,

      And the fresh young sense of Sweet

      The grace of the battle for food,

      With the issue Earth cannot refuse

      When men to their labour are sworn.

      ’Twas a song of the God of the Muse

         To the forehead of Morn.

IX

      Him loved she.  Lo, now was he veiled:

      Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:

      The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,

      Bent abeam, with a whitened track,

      Surprised, fast hauling the net,

      As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.

      She said: Is it night?  O not yet!

      With a travail of thoughts in her look.

      The mountain heaved up to its peak:

      Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;

      Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.

      Night? but never so fell a scowl

      Wore night, nor the sky since then

      When ocean ran swallowing shore,

      And the Gods looked down for men.

      Broke tempest with that stern roar

      Never yet, save when black on the whirl

      Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.

      Then the youth and the shuddering girl,

      Dim as shades in the angry shower,

      Joined hands and descended a maze

      Of the paths that were racing alive

      Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,

      Incessant, with sound of a hive.

      The height was a fountain-urn

      Pouring streams, and the whole solid height

      Leaped, chasing at every turn

      The pair in one spirit of flight

      To the folding pineforest.  Yet here,

      Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,

      The stillness bred spectral fear

      Of the awfulness ranging without,

      And imminent.  Downward they fled,

      From under the haunted roof,

      To the valley aquake with the tread

      Of an iron-resounding hoof,

      As of legions of thunderful horse

      Broken loose and in line tramping hard.

      For the rage of a hungry force

      Roamed blind of its mark over sward:

      They saw it rush dense in the cloak

      Of its travelling swathe of steam;

      All the vale through a thin thread-smoke

      Was thrown