George Meredith

Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie With her fair visage an inverted sky Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift, Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth (Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address The inner me that thirsts for her no less, And has so long been languishing in drouth, I feel that I am matched; that I am man! One restless corner of my heart or head, That holds a dying something never dead, Still frets, though Nature giveth all she can. It means, that woman is not, I opine, Her sex's antidote. Who seeks the asp For serpent's bites? 'Twould calm me could I clasp Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine!

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law.

What may the woman labour to confess? There is about her mouth a nervous twitch. 'Tis something to be told, or hidden:--which? I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess. She has desires of touch, as if to feel That all the household things are things she knew. She stops before the glass. What sight in view? A face that seems the latest to reveal! For she turns from it hastily, and tossed Irresolute, steals shadow-like to where I stand; and wavering pale before me there, Her tears fall still as oak-leaves after frost. She will not speak. I will not ask. We are League-sundered by the silent gulf between. Yon burly lovers on the village green, Yours is a lower, and a happier star!

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. It is a night to make the heavens our home More than the nest whereto apace we strive. Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: The living throb in me, the dead revive. Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath, Life glistens on the river of the death. It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs Of radiance, the radiance enrings: And this is the soul's haven to have felt.

This was the woman; what now of the man? But pass him. If he comes beneath a heel, He shall be crushed until he cannot feel, Or, being callous, haply till he can. But he is nothing:--nothing? Only mark The rich light striking out from her on him! Ha! what a sense it is when her eyes swim Across the man she singles, leaving dark All else! Lord God, who mad'st the thing so fair, See that I am drawn to her even now! It cannot be such harm on her cool brow To put a kiss? Yet if I meet him there! But she is mine! Ah, no! I know too well I claim a star whose light is overcast: I claim a phantom-woman in the Past. The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell!