

Transcribed from the 1901 Archibald Constable and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





                            A READING OF LIFE
                             WITH OTHER POEMS


                            BY GEORGE MEREDITH

                                * * * * *

                               WESTMINSTER
                       ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
                           2 WHITEHALL GARDENS
                                   1901

                                * * * * *

                             BUTLER & TANNER,
                       THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS,
                            FROME, AND LONDON




CONTENTS

                                                         PAGE
A READING OF LIFE
   THE VITAL CHOICE                                         1
   WITH THE HUNTRESS                                        3
   WITH THE PERSUADER                                       8
   THE TEST OF MANHOOD                                     28
THE CAGEING OF ARES                                        45
THE NIGHT-WALK                                             55
THE HUELESS LOVE                                           60
SONG IN THE SONGLESS                                       63
UNION IN DISSEVERANCE                                      64
THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH                                     65
THE MAIN REGRET                                            66
ALTERNATION                                                68
HAWARDEN                                                   69
AT THE CLOSE                                               70
FOREST HISTORY                                             71
A GARDEN IDYL                                              81
FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE                                     88
FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS
VERSE--
   THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES                              109
                   ,,,,,,,,                           112
   MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS                            114
   AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT                                 117
   PARIS AND DIOMEDES                                     119
   HYPNOS ON IDA                                          121
   CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS              122
   THE HORSES OF ACHILLES                                 123
THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE--
   FROM THE _MIREIO_                                      126





A READING OF LIFE


THE VITAL CHOICE


I


   OR shall we run with Artemis
   Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?
   Both are mighty;
   Both give bliss;
   Each can torture if divided;
   Each claims worship undivided,
   In her wake would have us wallow.


II


   Youth must offer on bent knees
   Homage unto one or other;
   Earth, the mother,
   This decrees;
   And unto the pallid Scyther
   Either points us shun we either
   Shun or too devoutly follow.



WITH THE HUNTRESS


   THROUGH the water-eye of night,
   Midway between eve and dawn,
   See the chase, the rout, the flight
   In deep forest; oread, faun,
   Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;
   Ravenous all the line for speed.
   See yon wavy sparkle beck
   Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead.
   Down her course a serpent star
   Coils and shatters at her heels;
   Peals the horn exulting, peals
   Plaintive, is it near or far.
   Huntress, arrowy to pursue,
   In and out of woody glen,
   Under cliffs that tear the blue,
   Over torrent, over fen,
   She and forest, where she skims
   Feathery, darken and relume:
   Those are her white-lightning limbs
   Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.
   Mountains hear her and call back,
   Shrewd with night: a frosty wail
   Distant: her the emerald vale
   Folds, and wonders in her track.
   Now her retinue is lean,
   Many rearward; streams the chase
   Eager forth of covert; seen
   One hot tide the rapturous race.
   Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,
   Up on a flash the lighted mound
   Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft
   Strung to barb with archer's craft,
   Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet
   Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.
   Fearful swiftness they outrun,
   Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,
   Challenge, charge of tusks elude:
   Theirs the dance to tame the rude;
   Beast, and beast in manhood tame,
   Follow we their silver flame.
   Pride of flesh from bondage free,
   Reaping vigour of its waste,
   Marks her servitors, and she
   Sanctifies the unembraced.
   Nought of perilous she reeks;
   Valour clothes her open breast;
   Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;
   Hallowed by the sex confessed.
   Huntress arrowy to pursue,
   Colder she than sunless dew,
   She, that breath of upper air;
   Ay, but never lyrist sang,
   Draught of Bacchus never sprang
   Blood the bliss of Gods to share,
   High o'er sweep of eagle wings,
   Like the run with her, when rings
   Clear her rally, and her dart,
   In the forest's cavern heart,
   Tells of her victorious aim.
   Then is pause and chatter, cheer,
   Laughter at some satyr lame,
   Looks upon the fallen deer,
   Measuring his noble crest;
   Here a favourite in her train,
   Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;
   All applauded.  Shall she reign
   Worshipped?  O to be with her there!
   She, that breath of nimble air,
   Lifts the breast to giant power.
   Maid and man, and man and maid,
   Who each other would devour
   Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,
   There are comrades, led by her,
   Maid-preserver, man-maker.



WITH THE PERSUADER


   WHO murmurs, hither, hither: who
   Where nought is audible so fills the ear?
   Where nought is visible can make appear
   A veil with eyes that waver through,
   Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come,
   Or day most golden?  All unseen and dumb,
   She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,
   Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire
   To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,
   Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,
   Flame in a crystal vessel sails
   Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,
   For land that drops the rosy day
   On nights of throbbing nightingales.

   Landward did the wonder flit,
   Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it.
   We saw the heavens fling down their rose;
   On rapturous waves we saw her glide;
   The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
   The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;
   And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more
   Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
   With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign
   An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

   More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
   The very she called forth by ripened blood
   For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
   Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
   The stream within us urged to flood;
   Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she,
   Maid, woman and divinity;
   Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
   Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit
   Untasted; she our written fate
   Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root:
   Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;
   The evanescent, ever-present she,
   Great Nature's stern necessity
   In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;
   With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take
   Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.

   The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.
   Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent,
   Her form is given to pardoned sight,
   And lets our mortal eyes receive
   The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;
   Adored by them who solitarily pace,
   In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve,
   The paths among the meadow asphodel,
   Remembering.  Never there her face
   Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell
   Around such whiteness the enamoured air
   Of noon that clothes her, never there.
   Daughter of light, the joyful light,
   She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,
   Sweet in her disregard of aid
   Divine to conquer or persuade.
   A fountain jets from moss; a flower
   Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.
   By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen
   With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.

   Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
   Her natural snares to make her will supreme.
   A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
   Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:
   One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;
   Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
   A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,
   Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.
   The bud of fresh virginity awaits
   The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:
   She touches on the hour of happy mates;
   Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

   And while commanding blissful sight believe
   It holds her as a body strained to breast,
   Down on the underworld's perpetual eve
   She plunges the possessor dispossessed;
   And bids believe that image, heaving warm,
   Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;
   The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
   A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.

   The rapture shed the torture weaves;
   The direst blow on human heart she deals:
   The pain to know the seen deceives;
   Nought true but what insufferably feels.
   And stabs of her delicious note,
   That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard
   Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,
   We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

   She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
   In her delicious laughter part revealed;
   Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
   For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.
   Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:
   Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
   Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
   Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.
   We dolorous complainers had a dream,
   Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,
   We saw stand bare of her celestial beam
   The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

   Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
   Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;
   And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips
   She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.
   Blush of our being between birth and death:
   Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:
   Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
   Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
   The generous Goddess yields.  And she can arm
   Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;
   Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.
   Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.
   But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
   Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.
   The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
   And holds the reason in perceptive thought.
   More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
   Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.
   Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,
   Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,
   In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:
   Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes
   For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.
   Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn
   Across her garden from the insaner crew,
   She darkens to malignity of scorn.
   A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:
   Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,
   The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring
   Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.
   These, the irreverent of Life's design,
   Division between natural and divine
   Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
   In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;
   And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
   Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.
   With them is war; and well the Goddess knows
   What undermines the race who mount the rose;
   How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
   Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:
   Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
   The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,
   And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.
   They who her sway withstand a sea defy,
   At every point of juncture must be proof;
   Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge
   Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
   For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
   She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
   Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.
   No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
   Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.
   These miserably disinclined,
   The lamentably unembraced,
   Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
   To people and beflower the waste.
   Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:
   For death they live, in life they die.

   Her head the Goddess from them turns,
   As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.
   She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
   And of her beauty mirror they become,
   Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,
   Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.
   Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,
   Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,
   Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,
   They play the music made of two:
   Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:
   Cunninger than the numbered strings,
   For melodies, for harmonies,
   For mastered discords, and the things
   Not vocable, whose mysteries
   Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

   Is it an anguish overflowing shame
   And the tongue's pudency confides to her,
   With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
   The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,
   Then is the Goddess tenderness
   Maternal, and she has a sister's tones
   Benign to soothe intemperate distress,
   Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.
   Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
   To those of her milk-bearer votaries
   As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source
   Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;
   Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;
   Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.
   And pray they under skies less overcast,
   That swiftly may her star of eve descend,
   Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
   To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

   Unfailing her reply to woman's voice
   In supplication instant.  Is it man's,
   She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,
   And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.
   Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;
   Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;
   And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise
   Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

   She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps
   To her invoked: distraction is implored.
   A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps
   Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.
   His tales of her declare she condescends;
   Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:
   Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose
   A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.
   She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs
   Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;
   Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.
   'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse
   Rarely the music made of two ascends,
   And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.
   Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends
   Herself to all, and yields herself to none,
   Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised
   In hot assurance under shade of doubt:
   And numerous are the images bepraised
   As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.

   Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo
   Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.
   That is her garden's precept, seen where shines
   Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.
   Daughter of light, the joyful light,
   She bids her couples face full East,
   Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast
   Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,
   The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.
   In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;
   High confidence in her whose aid is lent
   To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,
   Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.
   And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,
   Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,
   Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.

   Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe
   He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.
   For him requiring woman's arts to please
   Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,
   No race of giants!  In the woman's veins
   Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.
   Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,
   Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;
   Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss
   In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;
   And is it needed that Love's daintier brute
   Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.
   She is great Nature's ever intimate
   In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,
   Until perverted by her senseless male