Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

that between the fingers and the thumb.

      It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch,

      Which bade our public gobble or reject.

      O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked,

      Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!

      What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere,

      You dealt?—the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.

      CONTINUED

      Oracle of the market! thence you drew

      The taste which stamped you guide of the inept.—

      A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept,

      A sturdy and a briny, once men knew.

      He loved small beer, and for that copious brew,

      To roll ingurgitation till he slept,

      Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept:

      And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew.

      At last this dancer to the Polar star

      Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched,

      To drink the sea and pilot him to land.

      O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched,

      Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are

      Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.

      MY THEME

      Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt:

      The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.

      But I have never stood at Fortune’s beck:

      Were she and her light crew to run atilt

      At my poor holding little would be spilt;

      Small were the praise for singing o’er that wreck.

      Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck;

      He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.

      Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell

      With other than those votaries she deals

      The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.

      I say but that this love of Earth reveals

      A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,

      Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.

      CONTINUED

      ’Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts

      Through contemplation from a heart unbent

      By many tempests may be stained and rent:

      The summer flies it mightily attracts.

      Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts,

      Which scarce give breathing of the sty’s content

      For their diurnal carnal nourishment:

      Which treat with Nature in official pacts.

      The deader body Nature could proclaim.

      Much life have neither.  Let the heavens of wrath

      Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth.

      But during calms the flies of idle aim

      Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst

      For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.

      ON THE DANGER OF WAR

      Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,

      This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.

      When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric

      Seems reason they are ripe for cannon’s food.

      Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,

      But with the doubt ’tis our old devil’s trick.

      O now the down-slope of the lunatic

      Illumine lest we redden of that brood.

      For not since man in his first view of thee

      Ascended to the heavens giving sign

      Within him of deep sky and sounded sea,

      Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;

      In peril of his blood his ears incline

      To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.

      TO CARDINAL MANNING

      I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,

      Or straining for the angel of the light,

      Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,

      When I behold one lamp that through our fen

      Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again

      A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright

      From speaking to the soul of us forthright

      What things our craven senses keep from ken.

      This is the doing of the Christ; the way

      He went on earth; the service above guile

      To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;

      Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay

      Such misery as by these present signs

      Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.

      TO COLONEL CHARLES

      (DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)

I

      An English heart, my commandant,

      A soldier’s eye you have, awake

      To right and left; with looks askant

      On bulwarks not of adamant,

      Where white our Channel waters break.

II

      Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness

      Across the ruffled strip of salt,

      You look, and like the prospect less.

      On men and guns would you lay stress,

      To bid the Island’s foemen halt.

III

      While loud the Year is raising cry

      At birth to know if it must bear

      In history the bloody dye,

      An English heart, a soldier’s eye,

      For the old country first will care.

IV

      And how stands she, artillerist,

      Among the vapours waxing dense,

      With cannon charged?  ’Tis hist! and hist!

      And now she screws a gouty fist,

      And now she counts to clutch her pence.

V

      With shudders chill as aconite,

      The couchant chewer of the cud

      Will start at times in pussy fright

      Before the dogs, when reads her sprite

      The streaks predicting streams of blood.

VI

      She thinks they may mean something; thinks

      They may mean nothing: haply both.

      Where darkness all her daylight drinks,

      She fain would find a leader lynx,

      Not too much taxing mental sloth.

VII

      Cleft