Page images
PDF
EPUB

G

GEORGE MEREDITH.

EORGE MEREDITH was born in Hampshire, England, in 1828. His parents died when he was quite young, and he obtained his education as a ward in chancery. His education was received mostly in Germany, hence the Teutonic influence on all he has written. Intended for the profession of law, he soon abandoned it for literature. For many years his life was a hand to hand struggle with poverty in its harshest form. Early married to a daughter of Thomas Love Peacock the novelist, the union proved a very unhappy one lasting twelve years, and ended with his wife's death. Mr. Meredith's second wife died three years ago. By the first marriage he had one son, now living in Italy. By the second marriage a son, twenty-three, and a daughter, eighteen years old, now living with him in his pretty little cottage in one of the valleys of Surrey Downs. Mr. Meredith was naturally robust, but after sixty years of life in which the trials and sorrows were many, and the joys few he is described as being in delicate health.

Mr. Meredith is best known as a novelist, and is considered one of the greatest living writers of English fiction. In poetry he is original but obscure. Has been called "the Inarticulate Poet." It is only within the past few years that his poems have attracted any considerable attention in this country. C. W. M.

THE TWO MASKS.

MELPOMENE among her livid people,

Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks, Warned by old contests that one museful ripple Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks, Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos, Perchance may change of masks midway demand,

Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos,

The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.

For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures
Appealing to the fount of tears: that they
Strive never to outleap our human features,
And do Right Reason's ordinance obey,
In peril of the hum to laughter nighest.

But prove they under stress of action's fire
Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest,
She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre.

HARD WEATHER.

BURSTS from a rending East in flaws
The young green leaflet's harrier, sworn

To strew the garden, strip the shaws, And show our Spring with banner torn. Was ever such virago morn?

The wind has teeth, the wind has claws.
All the wind's wolves through woods are loose,
The wild wind's falconry aloft.

Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews,
At gallop, clumped, and down the croft
Bestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed;
It seems a scythe, it seems a rod.
The howl is up at the howl's accost;
The shivers greet and the shivers nod.

Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive
Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum;
Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive,
Or down in dregs, or on in scum.
And drums the distant, pipes the near,
And vale and hill are grey in gray,
As when the surge is crumbling sheer,
And sea-mews wing the haze of spray.
Clouds-are they bony witches?—swarms,
Darting swift on the robber's flight,
Hurry an infant sky in arms:

It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night.
Black while over the loop of blue

The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse.

Lo, as if swift the Furies flew,
The Fates at heel at a cry to horse!

Interpret me the savage whirr:
And is it Nature scourged, or she,
Her offspring's executioner,
Reducing land to barren sea?
But is there meaning in a day
When this fierce angel of the air,
Intent to throw, and haply slay,
Can for what breath of life we bear,
Exact the wrestle? Call to mind
The many meanings glistening up
When Nature to her nurslings kind,
Hands them the fruitage and the cup!
And seek we rich significance
Not otherwhere than with those tides
Of pleasure on the sunned expanse,
Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides?

Look in the face of men who fare
Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews
For this fierce angel of the air,

To twist with him and take his bruise.
That is the face beloved of old

Of Earth, young mother of her brood:
Nor broken for us shows the mould
When muscle is in mind renewed:

Though farther from her nature rude,
Yet nearer to her spirit's hold:
And though of gentler mood serene,
Still forceful of her fountain-jet.
So shall her blows be shrewdly met,
Be luminously read the scene
Where Life is at her grindstone set,
That she may give us edging keen,
String us for battle, till as play

The common strokes of fortune shower.
Such meaning in a dagger-day

Our wits may clasp to wax in power.
Yea, feel us warmer at her breast,
By spin of blood in lusty drill,

Than when her honeyed hands caressed,
And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill.

Behold the life at ease; it drifts.

The sharpened life commands its course.
She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts,
To dip her chosen in her source:
Contention is the vital force,

Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts,
Sky of the senses! on which height,

Not disconnected, yet released,
They see how spirit comes to light,
Through conquest of the inner beast,

Which Measure tames to movement sane,
In harmony with what is fair.
Never is Earth misread by brain:
That is the welling of her, there
The mirror: with one step beyond,
For likewise is it voice; and more,
Benignest kinship bids respond,
When wail the weak, and them restore
Whom days as fell as this may rive,
While Earth sits ebon in her gloom,
Us atomies of life alive
Unheeding, bent on life to come.
Her children of the laboring brain,
These are the champions of the race,
True parents, and the sole humane,
With understanding for their base.
Earth yields the milk, but all her mind
Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock.
Her passion for old giantkind,
That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock,
Devolves on them who read aright
Her meaning and devoutly serve;
Nor in her starlessness of night
Peruse her with the craven nerve:
But even as she from grass to corn,
To eagle high from grubbing mole,
Prove in strong brain her noblest born,
The station for the flight of soul.

WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY.
HAWK or shrike has done this deed
Of downy feathers: rueful sight!
Sweet sentimentalist, invite
Your bosom's Power to intercede.

So hard it seems that one must bleed
Because another needs will bite!
All round we find cold Nature slight
The feelings of the totter-knee'd.

O it were pleasant, with you

To fly from this tussle of foes,

The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle!
To dwell in yon dribble of dew
On the cheek of your sovereign rose,
And live the young life of a twinkle.

THE QUESTION WHITHER.

I.

WHEN We have thrown off this old suit,
So much in need of mending,
To sink among the naked mute,

Is that, think you, our ending?
We follow many, more we lead,
And you who sadly turf us,
Believe not that all living seed

Must flower above the surface.

II.

Sensation is a gracious gift,

But were it cramped to station, The prayer to have it cast adrift, Would spout from all sensation. Enough if we have winked to sun,

Have sped the plough a season; There is a soul for labor done, Endureth fixed as reason.

III.

Then let our trust be firm in Good,
Though we be of the fasting;
Our questions are a mortal brood,
Our work is everlasting.
We children of Beneficence

Are in its being sharers;

And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, For word with such wayfarers.

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN.
I.

LAST night returning from my twilight walk
I met the gray mist Death, whose eyeless brow
Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk
He reached me flowers as from a withered bough
O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

II.

Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.
Another stood by me, a shape in stone,
Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of
clay,

And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:

O Life, how naked and how hard when known!
III.

Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.
Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,
And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,
Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline:
Of Death, of Life, those in wound notes are mine.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?

Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff. Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord: She sings little hymns at the close of the day, Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord, And only one leg to kneel down with to pray. VI.

What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
If there's Law above all? Answer that if you
can!

Irreligious I'm not; But I look on this sphere
As a place where a man should just think like a

man.

It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise,

Do bullets in battle the wicked select? Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her

eyes,

She holds a fixed something by which I am checked.

VII.

Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall, If you eye it a minute 'll have the same look: So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!

It's the very same lesson we get from the Book. Then, is Life but a trial? Is that what is meant? Some must toil, and some perish, for others

below;

The injustice to each spreads a common content; Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.

VIII.

She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.

On earth there are engines and numerous fools. Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;

He does, and in some sort of way they're his tools.

It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;
In that case we'll bow down our heads, -as we
ought.

IX.

But the worst of me is, that when I bow my head, I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust, And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead, Of humble acceptance: for, question I must! Here's a creature made carefully-carefully made! Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and why?

The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's played.

The sky's a blue dish!-an implacable sky!
X.

Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.
They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
Am I judging all things from a single false
tone?

Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight.

It pours such a splendor on heaps of poor souls! I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night.

EARTH'S SECRET.

NOT solitarily in fields we find

Earth's secret open, though one page is there;
Her plainest, such as children spell, and share
With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind.
Not where the troubled passions toss the mind,
In turbid cities, can the key be bare.
It hangs for those who hither thither fare,
Close interthreading nature with our kind.
They, hearing History speak, of what men were,
And have become, are wise. The gain is great
In vision and solidity; it lives.

Yet at a thought of life apart from her,
Solidity and vision lose their state,

For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.

MY THEME. I.

Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt:
The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.
But I have never stood at Fortune's beck:
Were she and her light crew to run atilt
At my poor holding little would be spilt;
Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck.
Who courts her doom to strife his bended neck;

He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.
Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell
With other than those votaries she deals,
The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.
I say but that this love of Earth reveals
A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,
Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.
II.

'Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts
Through contemplation from a heart unbent
By many tempests may be stained and rent:
The summer flies it mightily attracts.

Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts,
Which scarce give breathing of the sty's content
For their diurnal carnal nourishment:
Which treat with Nature in official pacts.
The deader body Nature could proclaim.
Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath
Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth.
But during calms the flies of idle aim
Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst
For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

HORATIO NELSON POWERS.

L

OVERS of simple, genuine, and unmeretricious verse, associate the name of Horatio Nelson Powers with some of the best short poems that have appeared in American periodicals during the last two or three decades. Those who know the personality behind the name, recall a man of genial and dignified presence, of scholarly culture and kindly sympathies, whose friendship is at once a pleasure and an inspiration. A clergyman whose busy life has been largely devoted to the duties of his chosen calling, Dr. Powers has yet found time for the exercise of that literary talent and that wide range of intellectual activity that have given him name and influence far beyond the boundaries of his professional career. The latter may be briefly traced. Born in Amenia, Dutchess County, New York, in 1826, he was graduated at Union College in 1850, and at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City, in 1855. He was ordained in Trinity Church, New York, by Bishop Horatio Potter, and immediately entered upon the work of the ministry, as assistant to the Rev. Dr. (afterward Bishop) Samuel Bowman, rector of St. James's Church, Lancaster, Pa. Two years later (in 1857) he accepted a call to a parish at Davenport, Iowa, where he remained eleven years. In 1868 he became rector of St. John's Church, Chicago, continuing there until 1875, when he was called to Christ Church, Bridgeport, Conn. This charge he retained for ten years, removing in 1885 to Piermont-on-theHudson, where he still resides as rector. The scenery about Piermont is romantic and inspiring; and in a beautifully situated and pleasant parsonage built for him last year, and amidst harmonious surroundings, Dr. Powers, in the ripeness and maturity of his life, has a full measure of that peace and happiness which he merits and is so well fitted to enjoy. Some charming glimpses of the region where he lives, and of his life there, are given in a little poem entitled "My Walk to Church," published in Harper's Monthly last year, which readers will be glad to find reprinted in the present issue of this magazine. The poem is interesting also as showing in a marked degree what are perhaps Dr. Powers's most noticeable characteristics of a poet-a feeling for Nature, that is Wordsworthian in its depth and tenderness; a contemplative habit that sees the spiritual meaning of even the humblest things; and a cheerfulness and youthfulness of heart that keeps him ever young and sensitive to all beautiful forms and thoughts. No one can read "My Walk to Church," and others of his poems in the same sweet key, without feeling that the author in indeed one of those to whom

« PreviousContinue »