Poems. Volume 2. George Meredith

’tis very strange, ’tis said,

      How you spy in each of them

      Semblance of that Dragon red,

      As the oak in bracken-stem.

      And, ’tis said, how each and each:

      Which commences, which subsides:

      First my Dragon! doth beseech

      Her who food for all provides.

      And she answers with no sign;

      Utters neither yea nor nay;

      Fires the water hued as wine;

      Kneads another spark in clay.

      Terror is about her hid;

      Silence of the thunders locked;

      Lightnings lining the shut lid;

      Fixity on quaking rocked.

      Lo, you look at Flow and Drought

      Interflashed and interwrought:

      Ended is begun, begun

      Ended, quick as torrents run.

      Young Impulsion spouts to sink;

      Luridness and lustre link;

      ’Tis your come and go of breath;

      Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;

      Each of either reaped and sown:

      Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.

      See you so? your senses drift;

      ’Tis a shuttle weaving swift.

      Look with spirit past the sense,

      Spirit shines in permanence.

      That is She, the view of whom

      Is the dust within the tomb,

      Is the inner blush above,

      Look to loathe, or look to love;

      Think her Lump, or know her Flame;

      Dread her scourge, or read her aim;

      Shoot your hungers from their nerve;

      Or, in her example, serve.

      Some have found her sitting grave;

      Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,

      Hurling dust of fool and knave

      In a hissing smithy’s jet.

      More it were not well to speak;

      Burn to see, you need but seek.

      Once beheld she gives the key

      Airing every doorway, she.

      Little can you stop or steer

      Ere of her you are the seër.

      On the surface she will witch,

      Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze

      Under, and the soul is rich

      Past computing, past amaze.

      Then is courage that endures

      Even her awful tremble yours.

      Then, the reflex of that Fount

      Spied below, will Reason mount

      Lordly and a quenchless force,

      Lighting Pain to its mad source,

      Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,

      Shot through all its phantom shapes.

      Then your spirit will perceive

      Fleshly seed of fleshly sins;

      Where the passions interweave,

      How the serpent tangle spins

      Of the sense of Earth misprised,

      Brainlessly unrecognized;

      She being Spirit in her clods,

      Footway to the God of Gods.

      Then for you are pleasures pure,

      Sureties as the stars are sure:

      Not the wanton beckoning flags

      Which, of flattery and delight,

      Wax to the grim Habit-Hags

      Riding souls of men to night:

      Pleasures that through blood run sane,

      Quickening spirit from the brain.

      Each of each in sequent birth,

      Blood and brain and spirit, three,

      (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),

      Join for true felicity.

      Are they parted, then expect

      Some one sailing will be wrecked:

      Separate hunting are they sped,

      Scan the morsel coveted.

      Earth that Triad is: she hides

      Joy from him who that divides;

      Showers it when the three are one

      Glassing her in union.

      Earth your haven, Earth your helm,

      You command a double realm;

      Labouring here to pay your debt,

      Till your little sun shall set;

      Leaving her the future task:

      Loving her too well to ask.

      Eglantine that climbs the yew,

      She her darkest wreathes for those

      Knowing her the Ever-new,

      And themselves the kin o’ the rose.

      Life, the chisel, axe and sword,

      Wield who have her depths explored:

      Life, the dream, shall be their robe

      Large as air about the globe;

      Life, the question, hear its cry

      Echoed with concordant Why;

      Life, the small self-dragon ramped,

      Thrill for service to be stamped.

      Ay, and over every height

      Life for them shall wave a wand:

      That, the last, where sits affright,

      Homely shows the stream beyond.

      Love the light and be its lynx,

      You will track her and attain;

      Read her as no cruel Sphinx

      In the woods of Westermain,

      Daily fresh the woods are ranged;

      Glooms which otherwhere appal,

      Sounded: here, their worths exchanged

      Urban joins with pastoral:

      Little lost, save what may drop

      Husk-like, and the mind preserves.

      Natural overgrowths they lop,

      Yet from nature neither swerves,

      Trained or savage: for this cause:

      Of our Earth they ply the laws,

      Have in Earth their feeding root,

      Mind of man and bent of brute.

      Hear that song; both wild and ruled.

      Hear it: is it wail or mirth?

      Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?

      None, and all: it springs of Earth.

      O but hear it! ’tis the mind;

      Mind that with deep Earth unites,

      Round the solid trunk to wind

      Rings of clasping parasites.

      Music have you there to feed

      Simplest and most soaring need.

      Free