Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

dull the full breast of it blinked,

      Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er,

      Diminished, in strangeness distinct,

      Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:

      An Enna of fields beyond sun,

      Out of light, in a lurid web;

      And the traversing fury spun

      Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb;

      As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,

      Retire, and in ravenous greed,

      Inveterate, swell its return.

      Up and down, as if wringing from speed

      Sights that made the unsighted appear,

      Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.

      Lo, a sea upon land held career

      Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.

      Callistes of home and escape

      Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.

      She gazed at the Void of shape,

      She put her white hand to his reach,

      Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.

      And divided from day, from night,

      From air that is breath, stood she,

         Like the vale, out of light.

X

      Then again in disorderly words

      He muttered of home, and was mute,

      With the heart of the cowering birds

      Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot.

      He gave her some redness that streamed

      Through her limbs in a flitting glow.

      The sigh of our life she seemed,

      The bliss of it clothing in woe.

      Frailer than flower when the round

      Of the sickle encircles it: strong

      To tell of the things profound,

      Our inmost uttering song,

      Unspoken.  So stood she awhile

      In the gloom of the terror afield,

      And the silence about her smile

      Said more than of tongue is revealed.

      I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:

      It said: and not joylessly shone

      The remembrance of light through the screen

      Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.

      She led the youth trembling, appalled,

      To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise

      Like a panic-struck breast.  Then she called,

      And the hurricane blackness had eyes.

      It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt.

      Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side

      Would have clasped her and dared a revolt

      Sacrilegious as ever defied

      High Olympus, but vainly for strength

      His compassionate heart shook a frame

      Stricken rigid to ice all its length.

      On amain the black traveller came.

      Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,

      Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,

      And the lord of the steeds was in form

      He, the God of implacable brow,

      Darkness: he: he in person: he raged

      Through the wave like a boar of the wilds

      From the hunters and hounds disengaged,

      And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s.

      Horror melted in anguish to hear.

      Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path

      Of the terrible Charioteer,

      With the foam and torn features of wrath,

      Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;

      And the steeds clove it, rushing at land

      Like the teeth of the famished at meat.

         Then he swept out his hand.

XI

      This, no more, doth Callistes recall:

      He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,

      On the maiden the chariot fall,

      As a thundercloud swings on the moon.

      Forth, free of the deluge, one cry

      From the vanishing gallop rose clear:

      And: Skiágeneia! the sky

      Rang; Skiágeneia! the sphere.

      And she left him therewith, to rejoice,

      Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,

      The life of their day in her voice,

         Left her life in her name.

XII

      Now the valley in ruin of fields

      And fair meadowland, showing at eve

      Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields

      After battle, bade men believe

      That no other than wrathfullest God

      Had been loose on her beautiful breast,

      Where the flowery grass was clod,

      Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.

      The valley, discreet in grief,

      Disclosed but the open truth,

      And Enna had hope of the sheaf:

      There was none for the desolate youth

      Devoted to mourn and to crave.

      Of the secret he had divined

      Of his friend of a day would he rave:

      How for light of our earth she pined:

      For the olive, the vine and the wheat,

      Burning through with inherited fire:

      And when Mother went Mother to meet,

      She was prompted by simple desire

      In the day-destined car to have place

      At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,

      And be drawn to the dear earth’s face.

      She was fire for the blue and the green

      Of our earth, dark fire; athirst

      As a seed of her bosom for dawn,

      White air that had robed and nursed

      Her mother.  Now was she gone

      With the Silent, the God without tear,

      Like a bud peeping out of its sheath

      To be sundered and stamped with the sere.

      And Callistes to her beneath,

      As she to our beams, extinct,

      Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.

      In division so were they linked.

      But the song which had betrayed

      Her flight to the cavernous ear

      For its own keenly wakeful: that song

      Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer

      Of the husbandman’s heart made strong

      Through droughts and deluging rains

      With his