Collected English Verse — George Meredith. b. 1828, d. 1909 (Part 3 of 3)

has been our fellow, the morning of our days;
  Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darken’d
     That had thee here obscure.

785   Love’s Grave

MARK where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like,
Its skeleton shadow on the broad-back’d wave!
Here is a fitting spot to dig Love’s grave;
Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand:
In hearing of the ocean, and in sight
Of those ribb’d wind- streaks running into white.
If I the death of Love had deeply plann’d,
I never could have made it half so sure,
As by the unblest kisses which upbraid
The full-waked sense; or failing that, degrade;
’Tis morning: but no morning can restore
What we have forfeited. I see no sin:
The wrong is mix’d. In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betray’d by what is false within.

786   Lucifer in Starlight

ON a starr’d night Prince Lucifer uprose.
  Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
 Above the rolling ball in cloud part screen’d,
Where sinners hugg’d their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
  And now upon his western wing he lean’d,
  Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careen’d,
Now the black planet shadow’d Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that prick’d his scars
  With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reach’d a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he look’d, and sank.
Around the ancient track march’d, rank on rank,
  The army of unalterable law.

787   Dirge in Woods

A WIND sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.

The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
      And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
      Even we,
      Even so.