Poems. Volume 1 - George Meredith 3 стр.

   A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
   And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed
   Renewed thro all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.

   Seest thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
   Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
   Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters
Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.

   A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
   That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.
   The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,
Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.

   The song of a nightingale sent thro a slumbrous valley,
   Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,
   Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.

Violets, shy violets!
   How many hearts with you compare!
      Who hide themselves in thickest green,
            And thence, unseen,
   Ravish the enraptured air
   With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!

Violets, shy violets!
   Human hearts to me shall be
      Viewless violets in the grass,
            And as I pass,
   Odours and sweet imagery
   Will wait on mine and gladden me!

Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips
   To meet its earthly mate;
Heroic love that to its spheres eclipse
   Can dare to join its fate
With one beloved devoted human heart,
And share with it the passion and the smart,
         The undying bliss
         Of its most fleeting kiss;
         The fading grace
         Of its most sweet embrace:
   Angelic love, heroic love!
   Whose birth can only be above,
   Whose wandering must be on earth,
   Whose haven where it first had birth!
Love that can part with all but its own worth,
   And joy in every sacrifice
   That beautifies its Paradise!
And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,
With earnest tenderness itself consign,
And creeping up deliriously entwine
         Its dear delicious arms
               Round the beloved being!
         With fair unfolded charms,
               All-trusting, and all-seeing,
Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!
While to the panting hearts dry yearning drouth
   Buds the rich dewy mouth
         Tenderly uplifted,
         Like two rose-leaves drifted
Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!
         Such love, such love is thine,
         Such heart is mine,
O thou of mortal visions most divine!

   Know you the low pervading breeze
               That softly sings
   In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,
As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?
   And have you marked their still degrees
   Of ebbing melody, like the strings
Of a silver harp swept by a spirits hand
      In some strange glimmering land,
               Mid gushing springs,
               And glistenings
Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
   And have you marked in that still time
   The chariots of those shining cars
   Brighten upon the hushing dark,
               And bent to hark
That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,
   Pause in the dilating lustre
               Of the spheral cluster;
   Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!
   And felt, despite earths jarring wars,
               When day is done
               And dead the sun,
   Still a voice divine can sing,
   Still is there sympathy can bring
               A whisper from the stars!
Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know
How like a tree I tremble to the tones
               Of your sweet voice!
               How keenly I rejoice
   When in me with sweet motions slow
The spiritual music ebbs and moans
Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,
Dies in the light of its own paradise,
Dies, and relives eternal from its death,
Immortal melodies in each deep breath;
Sweeps thro my being, bearing up to thee
Myself, the weight of its eternity;
Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,
It marries music with the human lyre,
Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.

Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
   Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
   In patience and peace thou art goneto thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
   Dead tho a thousand hands stretchd out to save.

Thou camst to us sighing, and singing and dying,
   How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
   At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
   Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
   The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
   Allall is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
   Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
   And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love broken,
   No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
   Falln like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

   Take thy lute and sing
By the ruined castle walls,
Where the torrent-foam falls,
And long weeds wave:
   Take thy lute and sing,
Oer the grey ancestral grave!
   Daughter of a King,
      Tune thy string.

   Sing of happy hours,
In the roar of rushing time;
Till all the echoes chime
To the days gone by;
   Sing of passing hours
To the ever-present sky;
   Weepand let the showers
      Wake thy flowers.

   Sing of glories gone:
No more the blazoned fold
From the banner is unrolled;
The gold sun is set.
   Sing his glory gone,
For thy voice may charm him yet;
   Daughter of 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 mayst 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 touchd 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 ruins bud,
Be not that moist rich-smelling weed
With its arras-sembled brede,
And ruin-haunting stalk;
   Thou the ruins bud,
Be still the rose that lights the walk,
   Mix thy fragrant blood
      With the flood!

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
            Oer 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.

The silence of preluded song
Æolian silence charms the woods;
Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings
Are waiting for the masters 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 oer the ground
A moan of coming blasts creeps low
And rustles in the crisping grass;
Till suddenly with mighty arms
Outspread, that reach the horizon round,
The great South-West drives oer the earth,
And loosens all his roaring robes
Behind him, over heath and moor.
He comes upon the neck of night,
Like one that leaps a fiery steed
Whose keen black haunches quivering shine
With eagerness and haste, that needs
No spur to make the dark leagues fly!
Whose eyes are meteors of speed;
Whose mane is as a flashing foam;
Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks;
He comes, and while his growing gusts,
Wild couriers of his reckless course,
Are whistling from the daggered gorse,
And hurrying over fern and broom,
Midway, far off, he feigns to halt
And gather in his streaming train.

Now, whirring like an eagles wing
Preparing for a wide blue flight;
Now, flapping like a sail that tacks
And chides the wet bewildered mast;
Now, screaming like an anguishd thing
Chased close by some down-breathing beak;
Now, wailing like a breaking heart,
That will not wholly break, but hopes
With hope that knows itself in vain;
Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;
Now, cooing like a woodland dove;
Now, up again in roar and wrath
High soaring and wide sweeping; now,
With sudden fury dashing down
Full-force on the awaiting woods.

Long waited there, for aspens frail
That tinkle with a silver bell,
To warn the Zephyr of their love,
When danger is at hand, and wake
The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all
Their prophet harmony of leaves,
Had caught his earliest windward thought,
And told it trembling; naked birk
Down showering her dishevelled hair,
And like a beauty yielding up
Her fate to all the elements,
Had swayed in answer; hazels close,
Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,
And briared brakes that line the dells
With shaggy beetling brows, had sung
Shrill music, while the tattered flaws
Tore over them, and now the whole
Tumultuous concords, seized at once
With savage inspiration,pine,
And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,
And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave
And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,
And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,
And bend their stems, and bow their heads,
And grind, and groan, and lion-like
Roar to the echo-peopled hills
And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry
With harsh delight, and cave-like call
With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill
With mighty melodies, sublime,
From clumps of columnd pines that wave
A lofty anthem to the sky,
Fit music for a prophets soul
And like an ocean gathering power,
And murmuring deep, while down below
Reigns calm profound;not trembling now
The aspens, but like freshening waves
That fall upon a shingly beach;
And round the oak a solemn roll
Of organ harmony ascends,
And in the upper foliage sounds
A symphony of distant seas.

The voice of nature is abroad
This night; she fills the air with balm;
Her mystery is oer the land;
And who that hears her now and yields
His being to her yearning tones,
And seats his soul upon her wings,
And broadens oer the wind-swept world
With her, will gather in the flight
More knowledge of her secret, more
Delight in her beneficence,
Than hours of musing, or the lore
That lives with men could ever give!
Nor will it pass away when morn
Shall look upon the lulling leaves,
And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,
Dreams oer the paths of peaceful shade;
For every elemental power
Is kindred to our hearts, and once
Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,
Once taken to the unfettered sense,
Once claspt into the naked life,
The union is eternal.

   Follow me, follow me,
Over brake and under tree,
Thro the bosky tanglery,
         Brushwood and bramble!
   Follow me, follow me,
         Laugh and leap and scramble!
   Follow, follow,
   Hill and hollow,
   Fosse and burrow,
   Fen and furrow,
Down into the bulrush beds,
Midst the reeds and osier heads,
In the rushy soaking damps,
Where the vapours pitch their camps,
   Follow me, follow me,
         For a midnight ramble!
O! what a mighty fog,
What a merry night O ho!
Follow, follow, nigher, nigher
Over bank, and pond, and briar,
Down into the croaking ditches,
   Rotten log,
   Spotted frog,
   Beetle bright
   With crawling light,
         What a joy O ho!
Deep into the purple bog
         What a joy O ho!
Where like hosts of puckered witches
All the shivering agues sit
Warming hands and chafing feet,
By the blue marsh-hovering oils:
O the fools for all their moans!
Not a forest mad with fire
Could still their teeth, or warm their bones,
Or loose them from their chilly coils.
   What a clatter,
   How they chatter!
   Shrink and huddle,
   All a muddle!
         What a joy O ho!
Down we go, down we go,
         What a joy O ho!
Soon shall I be down below,
Plunging with a grey fat friar,
Hither, thither, to and fro,
Breathing mists and whisking lamps,
Plashing in the shiny swamps;
While my cousin Lantern Jack,
With cook ears and cunning eyes,
Turns him round upon his back,
Daubs him oozy green and black,
Sits upon his rolling size,
Where he lies, where he lies,
Groaning full of sack
Staring with his great round eyes!
What a joy O ho!
Sits upon him in the swamps
Breathing mists and whisking lamps!
         What a joy O ho!
Such a lad is Lantern Jack,
         When he rides the black nightmare
Through the fens, and puts a glare
In the friars track.
Such a frolic lad, good lack!
To turn a friar on his back,
Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.
Lay him sprawling, smack!
Such a lad is Lantern Jack!
Such a tricksy lad, good lack!
         What a joy O ho!
   Follow me, follow me,
Where he sits, and you shall see!