A Reading of Life, with Other Poems - George Meredith

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corner eyelids into haze:

      Many a fair Aphrosyne

      Like flower-bell to honey-bee:

      And here they flicker round the maze

      Bewildering him in heart and head:

      And here they wear the close demure,

      With subtle peeps to reassure:

      Others parade where love has bled,

      And of its crimson weave their mesh:

      Others to snap of fingers leap,

      As bearing breast with love asleep.

      These are her laughters in the flesh.

      Or would she fit a warrior mood,

      She lights her seeming unsubdued,

      And indicates the fortress-key.

      Or is it heart for heart that craves,

      She flecks along a run of waves

      The one to promise deeper sea.

      Bands of her limpid primitives,

      Or patterned in the curious braid,

      Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,

      For what he gives is he repaid.

      Good is it if by him ’tis held

      He wins the fairest ever welled

      From Nature’s founts: she whispers it: Even I

      Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,

      Else little is he lover.  Those he clasps,

      Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,—

      And be they doves or be they asps,—

      Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;

      Else counts he soon among life’s wholly tamed.

      Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,

      Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned

      The lover.  Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,

      He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,

      Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.

      Doth man divide divine Necessity

      From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s breasts

      A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain

      Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.

      Of this he perishes; not she, the throned

      On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.

      A loftier Reason out of deeper founts

      Earth’s chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned

      While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,

      And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;

      Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s cry,

      Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.

      Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear,

      When the wild sap at high tide smites

      Within us; or benignly clear

      To vision; or as the iris lights

      On fluctuant waters; she is ours

      Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;

      Flushing the world with odorous flowers:

      A soft compulsion on terrene

      By heavenly: and the world is hers

      While hunger after Beauty spurs.

      So is it sung in any space

      She fills, with laugh at shallow laws

      Forbidding love’s devised embrace,

      The music Beauty from it draws.

      THE TEST OF MANHOOD

      Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,

      An army issues out of wilderness,

      With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;

      Obstruction in the van; insane excess

      Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress

      Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,

      And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,

      The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.

      They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;

      A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.

      Then was the gracious birth of man’s new day;

      Divided from the haunted night it shone.

      That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang

      Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.

      Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:

      It was another earth unto him sang.

      Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?

      From the Persuader came it, in those vales

      Whereunto she melodiously invites,

      Her troops of eager servitors regales?

      Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed

      Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;

      Nor either points for us the way of flame.

      From him predestined mightier it came;

      His task to hold them both in breast, and yield

      Their dues to each, and of their war be field.

      The foes that in repulsion never ceased,

      Must he, who once has been the goodly beast

      Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,

      Constrain to make him serviceable man;

      Offending neither, nor the natural claim

      Each pressed, denying, for his true man’s name.

      Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife

      To hold them fast conjoined within him still;

      Submissive to his will

      Along the road of life!

      And marvel not he wavered if at whiles

      The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.

      For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;

      Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.

      Delicious licence called it Nature’s cry;

      Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;

      A tread on shingle timed his lame advance

      Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,

      He of the troubled marching army leaned

      On godhead visible, on godhead screened;

      The radiant roseate, the curtained white;

      Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.

      He drank of fictions, till celestial aid

      Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;

      Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,

      To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;

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