Poems. Volume 1 - George Meredith

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the dawn,

            He is gone!

         Pour forth all thy grief!

      Passionately sweep the chords,

      Wed them quivering to thy words;

      Wild words of wail!

         Shed thy withered grief—

      But hold not Autumn to thy bale;

         The eddy of the leaf

            Must be brief!

         Sing up to the night:

      Hard it is for streaming tears

      To read the calmness of the spheres;

      Coldly they shine;

         Sing up to their light;

      They have views thou may’st divine—

         Gain prophetic sight

            From their light!

         On the windy hills

      Lo, the little harebell leans

      On the spire-grass that it queens,

      With bonnet blue;

         Trusting love instils

      Love and subject reverence true;

         Learn what love instils

            On the hills!

         By the bare wayside

      Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks,

      Softly touch’d with pale green streaks,

      Soon, soon, to die;

         On the clothed hedgeside

      Bands of rosy beauties vie,

         In their prophesied

            Summer pride.

         From the snowdrop learn;

      Not in her pale life lives she,

      But in her blushing prophecy.

      Thus be thy hopes,

         Living but to yearn

      Upwards to the hidden scopes;—

         Even within the urn

            Let them burn!

         Heroes of thy race—

      Warriors with golden crowns,

      Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns

      Stare thee to stone;

         Matrons of thy race

      Pass before thee making moan;

         Full of solemn grace

            Is their pace.

         Piteous their despair!

      Piteous their looks forlorn!

      Terrible their ghostly scorn!

      Still hold thou fast;—

         Heed not their despair!—

      Thou art thy future, not thy past;

         Let them glance and glare

            Thro’ the air.

         Thou the ruin’s bud,

      Be not that moist rich-smelling weed

      With its arras-sembled brede,

      And ruin-haunting stalk;

         Thou the ruin’s bud,

      Be still the rose that lights the walk,

         Mix thy fragrant blood

            With the flood!

      THE RAPE OF AURORA

      Never, O never,

         Since dewy sweet Flora

      Was ravished by Zephyr,

         Was such a thing heard

                  In the valleys so hollow!

         Till rosy Aurora,

      Uprising as ever,

         Bright Phosphor to follow,

      Pale Phoebe to sever,

         Was caught like a bird

                  To the breast of Apollo!

      Wildly she flutters,

         And flushes all over

      With passionate mutters

         Of shame to the hush

                  Of his amorous whispers:

         But O such a lover

      Must win when he utters,

         Thro’ rosy red lispers,

      The pains that discover

         The wishes that gush

                  From the torches of Hesperus.

      One finger just touching

         The Orient chamber,

      Unflooded the gushing

         Of light that illumed

                  All her lustrous unveiling.

         On clouds of glow amber,

      Her limbs richly blushing,

         She lay sweetly wailing,

      In odours that gloomed

         On the God as he bloomed

                  O’er her loveliness paling.

      Great Pan in his covert

         Beheld the rare glistening,

      The cry of the love-hurt,

         The sigh and the kiss

                  Of the latest close mingling;

         But love, thought he, listening,

      Will not do a dove hurt,

         I know,—and a tingling,

      Latent with bliss,

         Prickt thro’ him, I wis,

                  For the Nymph he was singling.

      SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND

      The silence of preluded song—

      Æolian silence charms the woods;

      Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings

      Are waiting for the master’s touch

      To sweep them into storms of joy,

      Stands mute and whispers not; the birds

      Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,

      Save here and there a chirp or tweet,

      That utters fear or anxious love,

      Or when the ouzel sends a swift

      Half warble, shrinking back again

      His golden bill, or when aloud

      The storm-cock warns the dusking hills

      And villages and valleys round:

      For lo, beneath those ragged clouds

      That skirt the opening west, a stream

      Of yellow light and windy flame

      Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky

      Begins to gloom, and o’er the ground

      A

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