Poems. Volume 3. George Meredith

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      Better for them had they with Reason fenced

      Or smiled corrected!  They in the great Gods’ might

      Their prober crushed, as fingers flea.

      Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sire

      His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit

      Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire,

      The Satirist pass by on limping feet.

      Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight

      Below had then their last of airy glee;

      They in the cup sought Laughter’s drownèd sprite,

      Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit.

      Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount,

      And drew them down; to flattest earth they rolled.

      This know we veritable.  O Sage of Mirth!

      Can it be true, the story men recount

      Of the fall’n plight of the great Gods on earth?

      How they being deathless, though of human mould,

      With human cravings, undecaying frames,

      Must labour for subsistence; are a band

      Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leads

      At haunts of holiday on summer sand:

      And lightly he will hint to one that heeds

      Names in pained designation of them, names

      Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl

      Our hearing madly from our seeing dazed,

      Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats

      (His baby dimples in maternal chaps

      Running wild labyrinths of line and curl)

      Compassion for his masterful Trombone,

      Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazed

      Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats,

      Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan:

      For his fierce bugler horning onset, whom

      A truncheon-battered helmet caps . . .

      The creature is of earnest mien

      To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb.

      His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued,

      He names; they are a rayless red and white;

      The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude.

      And, if we recognize his Tambourine,

      He asks; exhausted names her: she has become

      A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen

      Of overflowing dome on dome;

      Redundancy contending with the tight,

      Leaping the dam!  He fondly calls, his girl,

      The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile,

      Refreshful.  O but now his brows are dun,

      Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile,

      To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames,

      Flower of the world, that honey one,

      She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl,

      To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss;

      He names her, as a worshipper he names,

      And indicates with a contemptuous thumb.

      The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike

      Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum.

      Curtain her close! her open arms

      Have suckers for beholders: she to this?

      For that she could not, save in fury, hear

      A sharp corrective utterance flick

      Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike

      Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer

      Above the snows, among the flowers?  She reaps

      This mouldy garner of the fatal kick?

      Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms,

      Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign,

      From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul,

      The trader in attractions sinks, all brine

      To thoughts of taste; is ’t love?—bark, dog! hoot, owl!

      And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps.

      Suicide Graces dangle down the charms

      Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps.

      She stands in her unholy oily leer

      A statue losing feature, weather-sick

      Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere.

      The curtain cried for magnifies to see!—

      We cannot quench our one corrupting glance:

      The vision of the rumour will not flee.

      Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart

      To bring her, countless as the crested deeps,

      Her subjects of the uncorrected heart?

      False is that vision, shrieks the devotee;

      Incredible, we echo; and anew

      Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps.

      Low humourist this leader seems; perchance

      Pitched from his University career,

      Adept at classic fooling.  Yet of mould

      Human those Gods were: deathless too:

      On high they not as meditatives paced:

      Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh:

      Descending, they would touch the lowest here:

      And she, that lighted form of blue and gold,

      Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced;

      Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh;

      Desired and hated, desperately dear;

      Most human of them was.  No more pursue!

      Enough that the black story can be told.

      It preaches to the eminently placed:

      For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due,

      Paints omen.  Truly they our throbber had;

      The passions plumping, passions playing leech,

      Cunning to trick us for the day’s good cheer.

      Our uncorrected human heart will swell

      To notions monstrous, doings mad

      As billows on a foam-lashed beach;

      Borne on the tides of alternating heats,

      Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well;

      Call the closed mouth of that harsh final Power

      To speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell:

      Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour;

      The last surviving on the upper seats;

      As with men Reason when their hearts rebel.