Poems. Volume 3

George Meredith

Poems – Volume 3

A STAVE OF ROVING TIM

(ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN FRIENDLY TRAMPS.)IThe wind is East, the wind is West,   Blows in and out of haven;The wind that blows is the wind that’s best,   And croak, my jolly raven!If here awhile we jigged and laughed,   The like we will do yonder;For he’s the man who masters a craft,   And light as a lord can wander.      So, foot the measure, Roving Tim,         And croak, my jolly raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.IIYou live in rows of snug abodes,   With gold, maybe, for counting;And mine’s the beck of the rainy roads   Against the sun a-mounting.I take the day as it behaves,   Nor shiver when ’tis airy;But comes a breeze, all you are on waves,   Sick chickens o’ Mother Carey!      So, now for next, cries Roving Tim,         And croak, my jolly raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.IIISweet lass, you screw a lovely leer,   To make a man consider.If you were up with the auctioneer,   I’d be a handsome bidder.But wedlock clips the rover’s wing;   She tricks him fly to spider;And when we get to fights in the Ring,   It’s trumps when you play outsider.      So, wrench and split, cries Roving Tim,         And croak, my jolly raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.IVAlong my winding way I know   A shady dell that’s winking;The very corner for Self and Co   To do a world of thinking.And shall I this? and shall I that?   Till Nature answers, ne’ther!Strike match and light your pipe in your hat,   Rejoicing in sound shoe-leather!      So lead along, cries Roving Tim,         And croak, my jolly raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.VA cunning hand ’ll hand you bread,   With freedom for your capers.I’m not so sure of a cunning head;   It steers to pits or vapours.But as for Life, we’ll bear in sight   The lesson Nature teaches;Regard it in a sailoring light,   And treat it like thirsty leeches.      So, fly your jib, cries Roving Tim,         And top your boom, old raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.VIShe’ll take, to please her dame and dad,   The shopman nicely shaven.She’ll learn to think o’ the marching lad   When perchers show they’re craven.You say the shopman piles a heap,   While I perhaps am fasting;And bless your wits, it haunts him in sleep,   His tin-kettle chance of lasting!      So hail the road, cries Roving Tim,         And hail the rain, old raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.VIIHe’s half a wife, yon pecker bill;   A book and likewise preacher.With any soul, in a game of skill,   He’ll prove your over-reacher.The reason is, his brains are bent   On doing things right single.You’d wish for them when pitching your tent   At night in a whirly dingle!      So, off we go, cries Roving Tim,         And on we go, old raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.VIIILord, no, man’s lot is not for bliss;   To call it woe is blindness:It’ll here a kick, and it’s there a kiss,   And here and there a kindness.He starts a hare and calls her joy;   He runs her down to sorrow:The dogs within him bother the boy,   But ’tis a new day to-morrow.      So, I at helm, cries Roving Tim,         And you at bow, old raven!      The wind according to its whim         Is in and out of haven.

JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE

IA revelation came on Jane,The widow of a labouring swain:And first her body trembled sharp,Then all the woman was a harpWith winds along the strings; she heard,Though there was neither tone nor word.IIFor past our hearing was the air,Beyond our speaking what it bare,And she within herself had sightOf heaven at work to cleanse outright,To make of her a mansion fitFor angel hosts inside to sit.IIIThey entered, and forthwith entranced,Her body braced, her members danced;Surprisingly the woman leapt;And countenance composed she kept:As gossip neighbours in the laneDeclared, who saw and pitied Jane.IVThese knew she had been reading books,The which was witnessed by her looksOf late: she had a maniaFor mad folk in America,And said for sure they led the way,But meat and beer were meant to stay.VThat she had visited a fair,Had seen a gauzy lady there,Alive with tricks on legs alone,As good as wings, was also known:And longwhiles in a sullen mood,Before her jumping, Jane would brood.VIA good knee’s height, they say, she sprang;Her arms and feet like those who hang:As if afire the body sped,And neither pair contributed.She jumped in silence: she was thoughtA corpse to resurrection caught.VIIThe villagers were mostly dazed;They jeered, they wondered, and they praised.’Twas guessed by some she was inspired,And some would have it she had hiredAn engine in her petticoats,To turn their wits and win their votes.VIIIHer first was Winny Earnes, a kindOf woman not to dance inclined;But she went up, entirely won,Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done;And once a vixen wild for speech,She found the better way to preach.IXNo long time after, Jane was seenDirecting jumps at Daddy Green;And that old man, to watch her fly,Had eyebrows made of arches high;Till homeward he likewise did hop,Oft calling on himself to stop!XIt was a scene when man and maid,Abandoning all other trade,And careless of the call to meals,Went jumping at the woman’s heels.By dozens they were counted soon,Without a sound to tell their tune.XIAlong the roads they came, and crossedThe fields, and o’er the hills were lost,And in the evening reappeared;Then short like hobbled horses reared,And down upon the grass they plumped:Alone their Jane to glory jumped.XIIAt morn they rose, to see her springAll going as an engine thing;And lighter than the gossamerShe led the bobbers following her,Past old acquaintances, and whereThey made the stranger stupid stare.XIIIWhen turnips were a filling crop,In scorn they jumped a butcher’s shop:Or, spite of threats to flog and souse,They jumped for shame a public-house:And much their legs were seized with rageIf passing by the vicarage.XIVThe tightness of a hempen ropeTheir bodies got; but laundry soapNot handsomer can rub the skinFor token of the washed within.Occasionally coughers castA leg aloft and coughed their last.XVThe weaker maids and some old men,Requiring rafters for the penOn rainy nights, were those who fell.The rest were quite a miracle,Refreshed as you may search all roundOn Club-feast days and cry, Not found!XVIFor these poor innocents, that sleptAgainst the sky, soft women wept:For never did they any theft;’Twas known when they their camping left,And jumped the cold out of their rags;In spirit rich as money-bags.XVIIThey jumped the question, jumped reply;And whether to insist, deny,Reprove, persuade, they jumped in ranksOr singly, straight the arms to flanks,And straight the legs, with just a kneeFor bending in a mild degree.XVIIIThe villagers might call them mad;An endless holiday they had,Of pleasure in a serious work:They taught by leaps where perils lurk,And with the lambkins practised sportsFor ’scaping Satan’s pounds and quarts.XIXIt really seemed on certain days,When they bobbed up their Lord to praise,And bobbing up they caught the glanceOf light, our secret is to dance,And hold the tongue from hindering peace;To dance out preacher and police.XXThose flies of boys disturbed them soreOn Sundays and when daylight wore:With withies cut from hedge or copse,They treated them as whipping-tops,And flung big stones with cruel aim;Yet all the flock jumped on the same.XXIFor what could persecution doTo worry such a blessed crew,On whom it was as wind to fire,Which set them always jumping higher?The parson and the lawyer tried,By meek persistency defied.XXIIBut if they bore, they could pursueAs well, and this the Bishop too;When inner warnings proved him plainThe chase for Jump-to-glory Jane.She knew it by his being sentTo bless the feasting in the tent.XXIIINot less than fifty years on end,The Squire had been the Bishop’s friend:And his poor tenants, harmless ones,With souls to save! fed not on buns,But angry meats: she took her placeOutside to show the way to grace.XXIVIn apron suit the Bishop stood;The crowding people kindly viewed.A gaunt grey woman he saw riseOn air, with most beseeching eyes:And evident as light in darkIt was, she set to him for mark.XXVHer highest leap had come: with easeShe jumped to reach the Bishop’s knees:Compressing tight her arms and lips,She sought to jump the Bishop’s hips:Her aim flew at his apron-band,That he might see and understand.XXVIThe mild inquiry of his gazeWas altered to a peaked amaze,At sight of thirty in ascent,To gain his notice clearly bent:And greatly Jane at heart was vexedBy his ploughed look of mind perplexed.XXVIIIn jumps that said, Beware the pit!More eloquent than speaking it—That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast;The heated nose on face of ghost,Which comes of drinking: up and o’erThe flesh with me! did Jane implore.XXVIIIShe jumped him high as huntsmen goAcross the gate; she jumped him low,To coax him to begin and feelHis infant steps returning, peelHis mortal pride, exposing fruit,And off with hat and apron suit.XXIXWe need much patience, well she knew,And out and out, and through and through,When we would gentlefolk address,However we may seek to bless:At times they hide them like the beastsFrom sacred beams; and mostly priests.XXXHe gave no sign of making bare,Nor she of faintness or despair.Inflamed with hope that she might win,If she but coaxed him to begin,She used all arts for making fain;The mother with her babe was Jane.XXXINow stamped the Squire, and knowing notHer business, waved her from the spot.Encircled by the men of might,The head of Jane, like flickering light,As in a charger, they beheldEre she was from the park expelled.XXXIIHer grief, in jumps of earthly weight,Did Jane around communicate:For that the moment when beganThe holy but mistaken man,In view of light, to take his lift,They cut him from her charm adrift!XXXIIIAnd he was lost: a banished faceFor ever from the ways of grace,Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.They saw the Bishop’s wavering spriteWithin her look, at come and go,Long after he had caused her woe.XXXIVHer greying eyes (until she sankAt Fredsham on the wayside bank,Like cinder heaps that whitened lieFrom coals that shot the flame to sky)Had glassy vacancies, which yearnedFor one in memory discerned.XXXVMay those who ply the tongue that cheats,And those who rush to beer and meats,And those whose mean ambition aimsAt palaces and titled names,Depart in such a cheerful strainAs did our Jump-to-glory Jane!XXXVIHer end was beautiful: one sigh.She jumped a foot when it was nigh.A lily in a linen cloutShe looked when they had laid her out.It is a lily-light she bearsFor England up the ladder-stairs.

THE RIDDLE FOR MEN

I   This Riddle rede or die,   Says History since our Flood,   To warn her sons of power:—It can be truth, it can be lie;Be parasite to twist awry;The drouthy vampire for your blood;The fountain of the silver flower;A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;Supple of wax or tempered steel;The spur to honour, snake in nest:’Tis as you will with it to deal;   To wear upon the breast,   Or trample under heel.II   And rede you not aright,   Says Nature, still in red   Shall History’s tale be writ!For solely thus you lead to lightThe trailing chapters she must write,And pass my fiery test of deadOr living through the furnace-pit:Dislinked from who the softer holdIn grip of brute, and brute remain:Of whom the woeful tale is told,How for one short Sultanic reign,   Their bodies lapse to mould,   Their souls behowl the plain.

THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY

IOne fairest of the ripe unwedded leftHer shadow on the Sage’s path; he found,By common signs, that she had done a theft.He could have made the sovereign heights resoundWith questions of the wherefore of her state:He on far other but an hour beforeIntent.  And was it man, or was it mate,That she disdained? or was there haply more?About her mouth a placid humour slippedThe dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eveSpread melting rings where late a swallow dipped.The surface was attentive to receive,The secret underneath enfolded fast.She had the step of the unconquered, brave,Not arrogant; and if the vessel’s mastWaved liberty, no challenge did it wave.Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls,With something of a wavering line unspelt.They hold the look whose tenderness condolesFor what the sister in the look has dealtOf fatal beyond healing; and her tonesA woman’s honeyed amorous outvied,As when in a dropped viol the wood-throb moansAmong the sobbing strings, that plain and chideLike infants for themselves, less deep to thrillThan those rich mother-notes for them breathed round.Those voices are not magic of the willTo strike love’s wound, but of love’s wound give sound,Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams.They waft to the moist tropics after storm,When out of passion spent thick incense steams,And jewel-belted clouds the wreck transform.Was never hand on brush or lyre to paintHer gracious manners, where the nuptial ringOf melody clasped motion in restraint:The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing.With such endowments armed was she and deckedTo make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind;Surpassing many a giant intellect,The marvel of that cradled infant mind.It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe;Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed;And promised in fair feminine to growA Sage’s match and mate, more heavenly orbed.IIAcross his path the spouseless Lady castHer shadow, and the man that thing became.His youth uprising called his age the Past.This was the strong grey head of laurelled name,And in his bosom an inverted SageMistook for light of morn the light which sank.But who while veins run blood shall know the pageSucceeding ere we turn upon our blank?Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud,Her silvered rims of mystery pointing inTo hollows of the half-veiled unavowed,Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spinQuick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphsOf phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent;They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffsFor their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent!Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth,The legends of her mission to beguile?Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youthHe bore at times, and tempted the sly smile;And not on her soft lips was it descried.She stepped her way benevolently grave:Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride,By tossing victim to the courtier knave,Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign.Rather ’twas humbleness in being pursued,As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine.Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed?All wisdom’s armoury this man could wield;And if the cynic in the Sage it pleasedTraverse her woman’s curtain and poor shield,For new example of a world diseased;Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare;A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast;Yet she most surely to this man stood fair:He worshipped like the young enthusiast,Named simpleton or poet.  Did he readRight through, and with the voice she held reservedAmid her vacant ruins jointly plead?Compassion for the man thus noble nervedThe pity for herself she felt in him,To wreak a deed of sacrifice, and save;At least, be worthy.  That our soul may swim,We sink our heart down bubbling under wave.It bubbles till it drops among the wrecks.But, ah! confession of a woman’s breast:She eminent, she honoured of her sex!Truth speaks, and takes the spots of the confessed,To veil them.  None of women, save their vile,Plays traitor to an army in the field.The cries most vindicating most defile.How shall a cause to Nature be appealed,When, under pressure of their common foe,Her sisters shun the Mother and disown,On pain of his intolerable crowAbove the fiction, built for him, o’erthrown?Irrational he is, irrationalMust they be, though not Reason’s light shall waneIn them with ever Nature at close call,Behind the fiction torturing to sustain;Who hear her in the milk, and sometimes makeA tongueless answer, shivered on a sigh:Whereat men dread their lofty structure’s quakeOnce more, and in their hosts for tocsin plyThe crazy roar of peril, leonineFor injured majesty.  That sigh of damesIs rare and soon suppressed.  Not they combineTo shake the structure sheltering them, which tamesTheir lustier if not wilder: fixed are they,In elegancy scarce denoting ease;And do they breathe, it is not to betrayThe martyr in the caryatides.Yet here and there along the graceful rowIs one who fetches breath from deeps, who deems,Moved by a desperate craving, their old foeMay yield a trustier friend than woman seems,And aid to bear the sculptured floral weightMassed upon heads not utterly of stone:May stamp endurance by expounding fate.She turned to him, and, This you seek is gone;Look in, she said, as pants the furnace, brief,Frost-white.  She gave his hearing sight to viewThe silent chamber of a brown curled leaf:Thing that had throbbed ere shot black lightning through.No further sign of heart could he discern:The picture of her speech was winter sky;A headless figure folding a cleft urn,Where tears once at the overflow were dry.IIISo spake she her first utterance on the rack.It softened torment, in the funeral huesRound wan Romance at ebb, but drove her backTo listen to herself, herself accuseHarshly as Love’s imperial cause allowed.She meant to grovel, and her lover praisedSo high o’er the condemnatory crowd,That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed.The picture was of hand fast joined to hand,Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledgedUnder the threatened flash of a bright brandAt arm’s length up, for severing action edged.Why, then Love’s Court of Honour contemplate;And two drowned shorecasts, who, for the life esteemedAbove their lost, invoke an advocateIn Passion’s purity, thereby redeemed.Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne,The woman stricken by an arrow falls.His advocate she can be, not her own,If, Traitress to thy sex! one sister calls.Have we such scenes of drapery’s mournfulnessOn Beauty’s revelations, witched we plant,Over the fair shape humbled to confess,An angel’s buckler, with loud choiric chant.IVNo knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard,The lady’s hand in her physician’s knew.She had not hoped for them as her award,When zig-zag on the tongue electric flewHer charge of counter-motives, none impure:But muteness whipped her skin.  She could have said,Her free confession was to work his cure,Show proofs for why she could not love or wed.Were they not shown?  His muteness shook in thrallHer body on the verge of that black pitSheer from the treacherous confessional,Demanding further, while perusing it.Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed.She sank; she snatched at colours; they were peelOf fruit past savour, in derision rosed.For the dark downward then her soul did reel.A press of hideous impulse urged to speak:A novel dread of man enchained her dumb.She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek,Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum:Welcome to women, when, between man’s lawsAnd Nature’s thirsts, they, soul from body torn,Give suck at breast to a celestial cause,Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn.Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content,To think the cure so manifest, so frailHer charm remaining.  Was the curtain’s rentToo wide? he but a man of that herd male?She saw him as that herd of the forked headButting the woman harrowed on her knees,Clothed only in life’s last devouring red.Confession at her fearful instant seesJudicial Silence write the devil factIn letters of the skeleton: at once,Swayed on the supplication of her act,The rabble reading, roaring to denounce,She joins.  No longer colouring, with skipsAt tangles, picture that for eyes in tearsMight swim the sequence, she addressed her lipsTo do the scaffold’s office at his ears.Into the bitter judgement of that herdOn women, she, deeming it present, fell.Her frenzy of abasement hugged the wordThey stone with, and so pile their citadelTo launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt.As had he flung it, in her breast it burned.Face and reflect it did her hot revoltFrom hardness, to the writhing rebel turned;Because the golden buckler was withheld,She to herself applies the powder-spark,For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled,Perishing to astound the tyrant Dark.She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain,It rang through air to sky, and rocked a worldThat danced down shades the scarlet dance profane;Most women! see! by the man’s view dustward hurled,Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.They sink upon their nature, the unnamed,And sops of nourishment may get some few,In place of understanding, scourged and shamed.Barely have seasoned women understoodThe great Irrational, who thunders power,Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood,And courts her in the covert’s dewy hour;Returning to his fortress nigh night’s end,With execration of her daughters’ lures.They help him the proud fortress to defend,Nor see what front it wears, what life immures,The murder it commits; nor that its baseIs shifty as a huckster’s opening dealFor bargain under smoothest market face,While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel,Justice protests that Reason is her seat;Elect Convenience, as Reason masked,Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat;Until a sentient world is overtasked,And rouses Reason’s fountain-self: she callsOn Nature; Nature answers: Share your guiltIn common when contention cracks the wallsOf the big house which not on me is built.The Lady said as much as breath will bear;To happier sisters inconceivable:Contemptible to veterans of the fair,Who show for a convolving pearly shell,A treasure of the shore, their written book.As much as woman’s breath will bear and liveShaped she to words beneath a knotted look,That held as if for grain the summing sieve.Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakesOur homely daylight after dread of spells.Lips sugared to let loose the little snakesOf slimy lustres ringing elfin bellsAbout a story of the naked flesh,Intending but to put some garment on,Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh,A traitor lurks and will be known anon.Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,Stationed for index down an ancient track:And ware of it was he while she poured outA broken moon on forest-waters black.Though past the stage where midway men are skilledTo scan their senses wriggling under plough,When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled,Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,Not handsomely; but now beholding bleedSoul of the woman in her prostrate speech,The valour of that rawness he could read.Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ranFrom senses up to thoughts, how she had readMaternally the warm remainder manBeneath his crust, and Nature’s pity shed,In shedding dearer than heart’s blood to lightHis vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.Therewith he could espy Confession’s fright;Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks;They suck from soil, and have their urgenciesBeside and with the lovely face mid leaves.Veins of divergencies, convergencies,Our botanist in womankind perceives;And if he hugs no wound, the man can prizeThat splendid consummation and sure proofOf more than heart in her, who might despise,Who drowns herself, for pity up aloofTo soar and be like Nature’s pity: sheInstinctive of what virtue in young daysHad served him for his pilot-star on sea,To trouble him in haven.  Thus his gazeCame out of rust, and more than the schooled tongueWas gifted to encourage and assure.He gave her of the deep well she had sprung;And name it gratitude, the word is poor.But name it gratitude, is aught as rareFrom sex to sex?  And let it have survivedTheir conflict, comes the peace between the pair,Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived:Unknown to Passion, generous for prey:Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.Their tenderest of self did each one slay;His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce;Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,Things living, slew they, and no artery bled.A moment of some sacrificial smokeThey passed, and were the dearer for their dead.He learnt how much we gain who make no claims.A nightcap on his flicker of grey fireWas thought of her sharp shudder in the flames,Confessing; and its conjured image dire,Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed;The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force,Visioned to hold corrected and abashedOur senile emulous; which rolls its courseProud to the shattering end; with these few lastHot quintessential drops of bryony juice,Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!And still, though having skin for man’s abuse,Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreathShot skyward from a blood at passionate jet,Repenting but in words, that stand as teethBetween the vivid lips; a vassal set;And numb, of formal value.  Are we trueIn nature, never natural thing repents;Albeit receiving punishment for due,Among the group of this world’s penitents;Albeit remorsefully regretting, oftCravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.Our world believes it stabler if the softAre whipped to show the face repentance wears.Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;Count Nature devilish, and accept for doomThe chasm between our passions and our wits!Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows,It trembles at betrayal of a sore.Hers is the glacier-conscience, to exposeImpurities for clearness at the core.She to her hungered thundering in breast,Ye shall not starve, not feebly designatesThe world repressing as a life repressed,Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates.How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian,Repents, she points for sight: and she avers,The hoofed half-angel in the PuritanNigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters.Sin against immaturity, the sinOf ravenous excess, what deed dividesMan from vitality; these bleed within;Bleed in the crippled relic that abides.Perpetually they bleed; a limb is lost,A piece of life, the very spirit maimed.But culprit who the law of man has crossedWith Nature’s dubiously within is blamed;Despite our cry at cutting of the whip,Our shiver in the night when numbers frown,We but bewail a broken fellowship,A sting, an isolation, a fall’n crown.Abject of sinners is that sensitive,The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalledIncorrigible: such title do we giveTo the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled;And, taking it for Nature, place in banOur Mother, as a Power wanton-willed,The shame and baffler of the soul of man,The recreant, reptilious.  Do thou buildThy mind on her foundations in earth’s bed;Behold man’s mind the child of her keen rod,For teaching how the wits and passions wedTo rear that temple of the credible God;Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain,Will shine, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm:Then, as a pathway through a field of grain,Man’s laws appear the blind progressive worm,That moves by touch, and thrust of linking ringsThe which to endow with vision, lift from mudTo level of their nature’s aims and springs,Must those, the twain beside our vital flood,Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife(Whom the so rosy ferryman invitesTo junction, and mid-channel over Life,Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites)Instruct in deeper than Convenience,In higher than the harvest of a year.Only the rooted knowledge to high senseOf heavenly can mount, and feel the spurFor fruitfullest advancement, eye a markBeyond the path with grain on either hand,Help to the steering of our social ArkOver the barbarous waters unto land.For us the double conscience and its war,The serving of two masters, false to both,Until those twain, who spring the root and areThe knowledge in division, plight a trothOf equal hands: nor longer circulateA pious token for their current coin,To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate,Fair feminine and masculine shall joinUpon an upper plane, still common mould,Where stamped religion and reflective paceA statelier measure, and the hoop of goldRounds to horizon for their soul’s embrace.Then shall those noblest of the earth and sunInmix unlike to waves on savage sea.But not till Nature’s laws and man’s are one,Can marriage of the man and woman be.VHe passed her through the sermon’s dull defile.Down under billowy vapour-gorges heavedThe city and the vale and mountain-pile.She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved.A new land in an old beneath her lay;And forth to meet it did her spirit rush,As bride who without shame has come to say,Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush.A natural woman’s heart, not more than cladBy station and bright raiment, gathers heatFrom nakedness in trusted hands: she hadThe joy of those who feel the world’s heart beat,After long doubt of it as fire or ice;Because one man had helped her to breathe free;Surprised to faith in something of a pricePast the old charity in chivalry:—Our first wild step to right the loaded scalesDisplaying women shamefully outweighed.The wisdom of humaneness best availsFor serving justice till that fraud is brayed.Her buried body fed the life she drank.And not another stripping of her wound!The startled thought on black delirium sank,While with her gentle surgeon she communed,And woman’s prospect of the yoke repelled.Her buried body gave her flowers and food;The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled;Love, the large love that folds the multitude.Soul’s chastity in honesty, and thisWith beauty, made the dower to men refused.And little do they know the prize they miss;Which is their happy fortune!  Thus he musedFor him, the cynic in the Sage had playA hazy moment, by a breath dispersed;To think, of all alive most wedded they,Whom time disjoined!  He needed her quick thirstFor renovated earth: on earth she gazed,With humble aim to foot beside the wise.Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raisedYet lowly over morning’s pure grey eyes.