A Reading of Life.
by George Meredith.
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, s.h.a.ggy 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 s.e.x; Hallowed by the s.e.x 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 G.o.ds 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 n.o.ble 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-sh.e.l.l 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e sea-sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sion"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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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, pa.s.sing 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 G.o.ddess, 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 G.o.ddess runs, the G.o.ddess hies, The generous G.o.ddess 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 th.o.r.n.y 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 G.o.ddess 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 pa.s.sion urge For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
She, tenderness, is pitiless to them Resisting in her G.o.dhead 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 pa.s.s them by: For death they live, in life they die.
Her head the G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess 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 l.u.s.trous 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.