Transcriber’s Note

Cover created by Transcriber, using an endpaper of the original book as the background, and placed in the Public Domain.

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

• THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT: An Arabian Entertainment.
• THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL.
• EVAN HARRINGTON.
• EMILIA IN ENGLAND.
• VITTORIA.
• BEAUCHAMP’S CAREER.
• THE EGOIST.
• &c. &c.
• Forthcoming Publications in Verse.
• POEMS.
• THE SENTIMENTALISTS: A Comedy.

POEMS AND LYRICS
OF
THE JOY OF EARTH

POEMS AND LYRICS
OF
THE JOY OF EARTH

BY
GEORGE MEREDITH

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1883

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.

INSCRIBED TO
JAMES COTTER MORISON

* * * *
Antistans mihi milibus trecentis.

CONTENTS.

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN.

I.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

Nothing harms beneath the leaves

More than waves a swimmer cleaves.

Toss your heart up with the lark,

Foot at peace with mouse and worm,

Fair you fare.

Only at a dread of dark

Quaver, and they quit their form:

Thousand eyeballs under hoods

Have you by the hair.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

II.

Here the snake across your path

Stretches in his golden bath:

Mossy-footed squirrels leap

Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:

Yaffles on a chuckle skim

Low to laugh from branches dim:

Up the pine, where sits the star,

Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.

Each has business of his own;

But should you distrust a tone,

Then beware.

Shudder all the haunted roods,

All the eyeballs under hoods

Shroud you in their glare.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

III.

Open hither, open hence,

Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,

Where the strawberry runs red,

With white star-flower overhead;

Cumbered by dry twig and cone,

Shredded husks of seedlings flown,

Mine of mole and spotted flint:

Of dire wizardry no hint,

Save mayhap the print that shows

Hasty outward-tripping toes,

Heels to terror, on the mould.

These, the woods of Westermain,

Are as others to behold,

Rich of wreathing sun and rain;

Foliage lustreful around

Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.

Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,

Shelter eager minikins,

Myriads, free to peck and pipe:

Would you better? would you worse?

You with them may gather ripe

Pleasures flowing not from purse.

Quick and far as Colour flies

Taking the delighted eyes,

You of any well that springs

May unfold the heaven of things;

Have it homely and within,

And thereof its likeness win,

Will you so in soul’s desire:

This do sages grant t’ the lyre.

This is being bird and more,

More than glad musician this;

Granaries you will have a store

Past the world of woe and bliss;

Sharing still its bliss and woe;

Harnessed to its hungers, no.

On the throne Success usurps,

You shall seat the joy you feel

Where a race of water chirps,

Twisting hues of flourished steel:

Or where light is caught in hoop

Up a clearing’s leafy rise,

Where the crossing deerherds troop

Classic splendours, knightly dyes.

Or, where old-eyed oxen chew

Speculation with the cud,

Read their pool of vision through,

Back to hours when mind was mud;

Nigh the knot, which did untwine

Timelessly to drowsy suns;

Seeing Earth a slimy spine,

Heaven a space for winging tons.

Farther, deeper, may you read,

Have you sight for things afield,

Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,

Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;

Showing a kind face and sweet:

Look you with the soul you see ’t.

Glory narrowing to grace,

Grace to glory magnified,

Following that will you embrace

Close in arms or aëry wide.

Banished is the white Foam-born

Not from here, nor under ban

Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn,

Pipings of the reedy Pan.

Loved of Earth of old they were,

Loving did interpret her;

And the sterner worship bars

None whom Song has made her stars.

You have seen the huntress moon

Radiantly facing dawn,

Dusky meads between them strewn

Glimmering like downy awn:

Argent Westward glows the hunt,

East the blush about to climb;

One another fair they front,

Transient, yet outshine the time;

Even as dewlight off the rose

In the mind a jewel sows.

Thus opposing grandeurs live

Here if Beauty be their dower;

Doth she of her spirit give,

Fleetingness will spare her flower.

This is in the tune we play,

Which no spring of strength would quell;

In subduing does not slay;

Guides the channel, guards the well:

Tempered holds the young blood-heat,

Yet through measured grave accord,

Hears the heart of wildness beat

Like a centaur’s hoof on sward.

Drink the sense the notes infuse,

You a larger self will find:

Sweetest fellowship ensues

With the creatures of your kind.

Ay, and Love, if Love it be

Flaming over I and ME,

Love meet they who do not shove

Cravings in the van of Love.

Courtly dames are here to woo,

Knowing love if it be true.

Reverence the blossom-shoot

Fervently, they are the fruit.

Mark them stepping, hear them talk,

Goddess, is no myth inane,

You will say of those who walk

In the woods of Westermain.

Waters that from throat and thigh

Dart the sun his arrows back;

Leaves that on a woodland sigh

Chat of secret things no lack;

Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,

Bare or veiled they move sincere;

Not by slavish terrors tripped;

Being anew in nature dipped,

Growths of what they step on, these;

With the roots the grace of trees.

Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,

For a tyrant’s flattered pride,

Mind, which nourished not by light,

Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:

Whereof are strange tales to tell;

Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.

Here the ancient battle ends,

Joining two astonished friends,

Who the kiss can give and take

With more warmth than in that world

Where the tiger claws the snake,

Snake her tiger clasps infurled,

And the issue of their fight

Peoples lands in snarling plight.

Here her splendid beast she leads

Silken-leashed and decked with weeds

Wild as he, but breathing faint

Sweetness of unfelt constraint.

Love, the great volcano, flings

Fires of lower Earth to sky;

Love, the sole permitted, sings

Sovereignly of ME and I.

Bowers he has of sacred shade,

Spaces of superb parade,

Voiceful ... But bring you a note

Wrangling, howsoe’er remote,

Discords out of discord spin

Round and round derisive din:

Sudden will a pallor pant

Chill at screeches miscreant;

Owls or spectres, thick they flee;

Nightmare upon horror broods;

Hooded laughter, monkish glee,

Gaps the vital air.

Enter these enchanted woods

You who dare.

IV.

You must love the light so well

That no darkness will seem fell.

Love it so you could accost

Fellowly a livid ghost.

Whish! the phantom wisps away,

Owns him smoke to cocks of day.

In your breast the light must burn

Fed of you, like corn in quern

Ever plumping while the wheel

Speeds the mill and drains the meal.

Light to light sees little strange,

Only features heavenly new;

Then you touch the nerve of Change,

Then of Earth you have the clue;

Then her two-sexed meanings melt

Through you, wed the thought and felt.

Sameness locks no scurfy pond

Here for Custom, crazy-fond:

Change is on the wing to bud

Rose in brain from rose in blood.

Wisdom throbbing shall you see

Central in complexity;

From her pasture ’mid the beasts

Rise to her ethereal feasts,

Not, though lightnings track your wit

Starward, scorning them you quit:

For be sure the bravest wing

Preens it in our common spring,

Thence along the vault to soar,

You with others, gathering more,

Glad of more, till you reject

Your proud title of elect,

Perilous even here, while few

Roam the arched greenwood with you.

Heed that snare.

Muffled by his cavern-cowl

Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,

Who was lord ere light you drank,

And lest blood of knightly rank

Stream, let not your fair princess

Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,

Watches keenly there.

Oft has he been riven; slain

Is no force in Westermain.

Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,

Put his fangs to uses, tame,

Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,

How to cure him sick and lame.

Much restricted, much enringed,

Much he frets, the hooked and winged,

Never known to spare.

’Tis enough: the name of Sage

Hits no thing in nature, nought;

Man the least, save when grave Age

From yon Dragon guards his thought.

Eye him when you hearken dumb

To what words from Wisdom come.

When she says how few are by

Listening to her, eye his eye.

Him shall Change, transforming late,

Wonderously renovate.

Hug himself the creature may:

What he hugs is loathed decay.

Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!

Change will strip his armour off;

Make of him who was all maw,

Inly only thrilling-shrewd,

Such a servant as none saw

Through his days of dragonhood.

Days when growling o’er his bone,

Sharpened he for mine and thine;

Sensitive within alone;

Scaly as in clefts of pine.

Change, the strongest son of Life,

Has the Spirit here to wife.

Lo, their young of vivid breed,

Bear the lights that onward speed,

Threading thickets, mounting glades,

Up the verdurous colonnades,

Round the fluttered curves, and down,

Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown,

Whither, in her central space,

Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase.

Fount unresting, Lure divine!

There meet all: too late look most.

Fire in water hued as wine,

Springs amid a shadowy host;

Circled: one close-headed mob,

Breathless, scanning divers heaps

Where a Heart begins to throb,