George Meredith
Poems. Volume 3

Iliad, ii 455

MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS

Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,
Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,
So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the splendour
Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault.
They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks,
Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-swans,
Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaïstros;
Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,
Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them resoundeth;
So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured forth
On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them
Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the horse-hooves.
Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d field of Scamander, their thousands
Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.
Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse,
Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s wonning, where then are the milk-pails
Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;
Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,
Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush them.
Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, know
Easily one from the other when all get mixed o’er the pasture,
So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for onslaught,
Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,
He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder,
He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.

Iliad, xi, 148

AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT

These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest,
Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians.
Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion,
Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud,
Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse-hooves)
Hewed with the sword’s sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon
Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives.

Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclippèd wood-land,
This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the scrubwood
Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire’s fury rageing,
So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered
Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,
Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,
Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were outstretched
Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.

Iliad, xi, 378

PARIS AND DIOMEDES

So he, with a clear shout of laughter,
Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:
“Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had pierced thee
Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!
Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst,
They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion.”
Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:
“Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!
If that thou dared’st face me here out in the open with weapons,
Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.
Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;
Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.
Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, noughtworth!
Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest,
My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.
Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen slaughtered,
Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops,
Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women.”

Iliad, xiv, 283

HYPNOS ON IDA

They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland.
There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.
There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for concealment,
That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the mountains,
Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.

Iliad, xvii, 426

CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS

Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,
Whipped from the sea’s deeps up by the terrible blast of the Northwind;
Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire’s rush so arousing,
Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;
Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees’
Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;
As rose then stupendous the Trojan’s cry and Achaians’,
Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict.

Iliad, xvii, 426

THE HORSES OF ACHILLES

So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,
Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there,
Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.
Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,
Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and oft, too,
Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.
Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious,
Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.
Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,
Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;
Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car,
Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant
Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids,
Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,
Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the yoke-bow.
Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook
Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom;
“Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal
Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!
Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-grief?
’Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere
Aught over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath and has movement.”

THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE

FROM THE ‘MIRÈIO’ OF MISTRAL

   A hundred mares, all white! their manes
   Like mace-reed of the marshy plains
   Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ the shears:
   And when the fiery squadron rears
   Bursting at speed, each mane appears
   Even as the white scarf of a fay
Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.

   O race of humankind, take shame!
   For never yet a hand could tame,
   Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue
   The mares of the Camargue. I have known,
   By treason snared, some captives shown;
   Expatriate from their native Rhone,
Led off, their saline pastures far from view:

   And on a day, with prompt rebound,
   They have flung their riders to the ground,
   And at a single gallop, scouring free,
   Wide-nostril’d to the wind, twice ten
   Of long marsh-leagues devour’d, and then,
   Back to the Vacarés again,
After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea

   For of this savage race unbent,
   The ocean is the element.
   Of old escaped from Neptune’s car, full sure,
   Still with the white foam fleck’d are they,
   And when the sea puffs black from grey,
   And ships part cables, loudly neigh
The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;

   And keen as a whip they lash and crack
   Their tails that drag the dust, and back
   Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he,
   The God, drives deep his trident teeth,
   Who in one horror, above, beneath,
   Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,
And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.

Cant. iv.

‘ATKINS’

Yonder’s the man with his life in his hand,
Legs on the march for whatever the land,
   Or to the slaughter, or to the maiming,
      Getting the dole of a dog for pay.
Laurels he clasps in the words ‘duty done,’
England his heart under every sun:—
   Exquisite humour! that gives him a naming
      Base to the ear as an ass’s bray.

THE VOYAGE OF THE ‘OPHIR’

Men of our race, we send you one
Round whom Victoria’s holy name
Is halo from the sunken sun
Of her grand Summer’s day aflame.
The heart of your loved Motherland,
To them she loves as her own blood,
This Flower of Ocean bears in hand,
   Assured of gift as good.

Forth for our Southern shores the fleet
Which crowns a nation’s wisdom steams,
That there may Briton Briton greet,
And stamp as fact Imperial dreams.
Across the globe, from sea to sea,
The long smoke-pennon trails above,
Writes over sky how wise will be
   The Power that trusts to love.

A love that springs from heart and brain
In union gives for ripest fruit
The concord Kings and States in vain
Have sought, who played the lofty brute,
And fondly deeming they possessed,
On force relied, and found it break:
That truth once scored on Britain’s breast
   Now keeps her mind awake.

Australian, Canadian,
To tone old veins with streams of youth,
Our trust be on the best in man
Henceforth, and we shall prove that truth.
Prove to a world of brows down-bent
That in the Britain thus endowed,
Imperial means beneficent,
   And strength to service vowed.

THE CRISIS

Spirit of Russia, now has come
The day when thou canst not be dumb.
Around thee foams the torrent tide,
Above thee its fell fountain, Pride.
The senseless rock awaits thy word
To crumble; shall it be unheard?
Already, like a tempest-sun,
That shoots the flare and shuts to dun,
Thy land ’twixt flame and darkness heaves,
Showing the blade wherewith Fate cleaves,
If mortals in high courage fail
At the one breath before the gale.
Those rulers in all forms of lust,
Who trod thy children down to dust
On the red Sunday, know right well
What word for them thy voice would spell,
What quick perdition for them weave,
Did they in such a voice believe.
Not thine to raise the avenger’s shriek,
Nor turn to them a Tolstoi cheek;
Nor menace him, the waverer still,
Man of much heart and little will,
The criminal of his high seat,
Whose plea of Guiltless judges it.
For him thy voice shall bring to hand
Salvation, and to thy torn land,
Seen on the breakers. Now has come
The day when thou canst not be dumb,
Spirit of Russia:—those who bind
Thy limbs and iron-cap thy mind,
Take thee for quaking flesh, misdoubt
That thou art of the rabble rout
Which cries and flees, with whimpering lip,
From reckless gun and brutal whip;
But he who has at heart the deeds
Of thy heroic offspring reads
In them a soul; not given to shrink
From peril on the abyss’s brink;
With never dread of murderous power;
With view beyond the crimson hour;
Neither an instinct-driven might,
Nor visionary erudite;
A soul; that art thou. It remains
For thee to stay thy children’s veins,
The countertides of hate arrest,
Give to thy sons a breathing breast,
And Him resembling, in His sight,
Say to thy land, Let there be Light.

OCTOBER 21, 1905

   The hundred years have passed, and he
   Whose name appeased a nation’s fears,
   As with a hand laid over sea;
   To thunder through the foeman’s ears
   Defeat before his blast of fire;
   Lives in the immortality
That poets dream and noblest souls desire.

   Never did nation’s need evoke
   Hero like him for aid, the while
   A Continent was cannon-smoke
   Or peace in slavery: this one Isle
   Reflecting Nature: this one man
   Her sea-hound and her mortal stroke,
With war-worn body aye in battle’s van.

   And do we love him well, as well
   As he his country, we may greet,
   With hand on steel, our passing bell
   Nigh on the swing, for prelude sweet
   To the music heard when his last breath
   Hung on its ebb beside the knell,
And Victory in his ear sang gracious Death.

   Ah, day of glory! day of tears!
   Day of a people bowed as one!
   Behold across those hundred years
   The lion flash of gun at gun:
   Our bitter pride; our love bereaved;
   What pall of cloud o’ercame our sun
That day, to bear his wreath, the end achieved.

   Joy that no more with murder’s frown
   The ancient rivals bark apart.
   Now Nelson to brave France is shown
   A hero after her own heart:
   And he now scanning that quick race,
   To whom through life his glove was thrown,
Would know a sister spirit to embrace.

THE CENTENARY OF GARIBALDI

We who have seen Italia in the throes,
Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now
Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough
All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those
Who blew the breath of life into her frame:
Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three:
Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free
From ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim.

That aim, albeit they were of minds diverse,
Conjoined them, not to strive without surcease;
For them could be no babblement of peace
While lay their country under Slavery’s curse.

The set of torn Italia’s glorious day
Was ever sunrise in each filial breast.
Of eagle beaks by righteousness unblest
They felt her pulsing body made the prey.

Wherefore they struck, and had to count their dead.
With bitter smile of resolution nerved
To try new issues, holding faith unswerved,
Promise they gathered from the rich blood shed.

In them Italia, visible to us then
As living, rose; for proof that huge brute Force
Has never being from celestial source,
And is the lord of cravens, not of men.

Now breaking up the crust of temporal strife,
Who reads their acts enshrined in History, sees
That Tyrants were the Revolutionaries,
The Rebels men heart-vowed to hallowed life.

Pure as the Archangel’s cleaving Darkness thro’,
The Sword he sees, the keen unwearied Sword,
A single blade against a circling horde,
And aye for Freedom and the trampled few.

The cry of Liberty from dungeon cell,
From exile, was his God’s command to smite,
As for a swim in sea he joined the fight,
With radiant face, full sure that he did well.

Behold a warrior dealing mortal strokes,
Whose nature was a child’s: amid his foes
A wary trickster: at the battle’s close,
No gentler friend this leopard dashed with fox.

Down the long roll of History will run
The story of these deeds, and speed his race
Beneath defeat more hotly to embrace
The noble cause and trust to another sun.

And lo, that sun is in Italia’s skies
This day, by grace of his good sword in part.
It beckons her to keep a warrior heart
For guard of beauty, all too sweet a prize.

Earth gave him: blessèd be the Earth that gave.
Earth’s Master crowned his honest work on earth:
Proudly Italia names his place of birth:
The bosom of Humanity his grave.

THE WILD ROSE

High climbs June’s wild rose,
Her bush all blooms in a swarm;
And swift from the bud she blows,
In a day when the wooer is warm;
Frank to receive and give,
Her bosom is open to bee and sun:
Pride she has none,
Nor shame she knows;
Happy to live.

Unlike those of the garden nigh,
Her queenly sisters enthroned by art;
Loosening petals one by one
To the fiery Passion’s dart
Superbly shy.
For them in some glory of hair,
Or nest of the heaving mounds to lie,
Or path of the bride bestrew.
Ever are they the theme for song.
But nought of that is her share.
Hardly from wayfarers tramping along,
A glance they care not to renew.

And she at a word of the claims of kin
Shrinks to the level of roads and meads:
She is only a plain princess of the weeds,
As an outcast witless of sin:
Much disregarded, save by the few
Who love her, that has not a spot of deceit,
No promise of sweet beyond sweet,
Often descending to sour.
On any fair breast she would die in an hour.
Praises she scarce could bear,
Were any wild poet to praise.
Her aim is to rise into light and air.
One of the darlings of Earth, no more,
And little it seems in the dusty ways,
Unless to the grasses nodding beneath;
The bird clapping wings to soar,
The clouds of an evetide’s wreath.

THE CALL

   Under what spell are we debased
      By fears for our inviolate Isle,
   Whose record is of dangers faced
      And flung to heel with even smile?
Is it a vaster force, a subtler guile?

   They say Exercitus designs
      To match the famed Salsipotent
   Where on her sceptre she reclines;
      Awake: but were a slumber sent
By guilty gods, more fell his foul intent.

   The subtler web, the vaster foe,
      Well may we meet when drilled for deeds:
   But in these days of wealth at flow,
      A word of breezy warning breeds
The pained responses seen in lakeside reeds.

   We fain would stand contemplative,
      All innocent as meadow grass;
   In human goodness fain believe,
      Believe a cloud is formed to pass;
Its shadows chase with draughts of hippocras.

   Others have gone; the way they went
      Sweet sunny now, and safe our nest.
   Humanity, enlightenment,
      Against the warning hum protest:
Let the world hear that we know what is best.

   So do the beatific speak;
      Yet have they ears, and eyes as well;
   And if not with a paler cheek,
      They feel the shivers in them dwell,
That something of a dubious future tell.

   For huge possessions render slack
      The power we need to hold them fast;
   Save when a quickened heart shall make
      Our people one, to meet what blast
May blow from temporal heavens overcast.

   Our people one! Nor they with strength
      Dependent on a single arm:
   Alert, and braced the whole land’s length,
      Rejoicing in their manhood’s charm
For friend or foe; to succour, not to harm.

   Has ever weakness won esteem?
      Or counts it as a prized ally?
   They who have read in History deem
      It ranks among the slavish fry,
Whose claim to live justiciary Fates deny.

   It can not be declared we are
      A nation till from end to end
   The land can show such front to war
      As bids a crouching foe expend
His ire in air, and preferably be friend.

   We dreading him, we do him wrong;
      For fears discolour, fears invite.
   Like him, our task is to be strong;
      Unlike him, claiming not by might
To snatch an envied treasure as a right.

   So may a stouter brotherhood
      At home be signalled over sea
   For righteous, and be understood,
      Nay, welcomed, when ’tis shown that we
All duties have embraced in being free.

   This Britain slumbering, she is rich;
      Lies placid as a cradled child;
   At times with an uneasy twitch,
      That tells of dreams unduly wild.
Shall she be with a foreign drug defiled?

   The grandeur of her deeds recall;
      Look on her face so kindly fair:
   This Britain! and were she to fall,
      Mankind would breathe a harsher air,
The nations miss a light of leading rare.

ON COMO

A rainless darkness drew o’er the lake
As we lay in our boat with oars unshipped.
It seemed neither cloud nor water awake,
And forth of the low black curtain slipped
Thunderless lightning. Scoff no more
At angels imagined in downward flight
For the daughters of earth as fabled of yore:
Here was beauty might well invite
Dark heavens to gleam with the fire of a sun
Resurgent; here the exchanged embrace
Worthy of heaven and earth made one.

And witness it, ye of the privileged space,
Said the flash; and the mountains, as from an abyss
For quivering seconds leaped up to attest
That given, received, renewed was the kiss;
The lips to lips and the breast to breast;
All in a glory of ecstasy, swift
As an eagle at prey, and pure as the prayer
Of an infant bidden joined hands uplift
To be guarded through darkness by spirits of air,
Ere setting the sails of sleep till day.
Slowly the low cloud swung, and far
It panted along its mirrored way;
Above loose threads one sanctioning star,
The wonder of what had been witnessed, sealed,
And with me still as in crystal glassed
Are the depths alight, the heavens revealed,
Where on to the Alps the muteness passed.

MILTON
DECEMBER 9, 1608: DECEMBER 9, 1908

What splendour of imperial station man,
The Tree of Life, may reach when, rooted fast,
His branching stem points way to upper air
And skyward still aspires, we see in him
Who sang for us the Archangelical host,
Made Morning, by old Darkness urged to the abyss;
A voice that down three centuries onward rolls;
Onward will roll while lives our English tongue,
In the devout of music unsurpassed
Since Piety won Heaven’s ear on Israel’s harp.

The face of Earth, the soul of Earth, her charm,
Her dread austerity; the quavering fate
Of mortals with blind hope by passion swayed,
His mind embraced, the while on trodden soil,
Defender of the Commonwealth, he joined
Our temporal fray, whereof is vital fruit,
And, choosing armoury of the Scholar, stood
Beside his peers to raise the voice for Freedom:
Nor has fair Liberty a champion armed
To meet on heights or plains the Sophister
Throughout the ages, equal to this man,
Whose spirit breathed high Heaven, and drew thence
The ethereal sword to smite.

               Were England sunk
Beneath the shifting tides, her heart, her brain,
The smile she wears, the faith she holds, her best,
Would live full-toned in the grand delivery
Of his cathedral speech: an utterance
Almost divine, and such as Hellespont,
Crashing its breakers under Ida’s frown,
Inspired: yet worthier he, whose instrument
Was by comparison the coarse reed-pipe;
Whereof have come the marvellous harmonies,
Which, with his lofty theme, of infinite range,
Abash, entrance, exalt.

               We need him now,
This latest Age in repetition cries:
For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst;
Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat
From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly
(Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask
Of hypocritical Peace,) inveterate Moloch
Remains the great example.

               Homage to him
His debtor band, innumerable as waves
Running all golden from an eastern sun,
Joyfully render, in deep reverence
Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton’s name,
Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear.