George Meredith Poems

When April with her wild blue eye
Comes dancing over the grass,
And all the crimson buds so shy
...

I

Prince of Bards was old Aneurin;
He the grand Gododin sang;
...

In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour,
When in the firelight steadily aglow,
Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow
Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower
...

I

Ladies who in chains of wedlock
Chafe at an unequal yoke,
...

Take thy lute and sing
By the ruined castle walls,
Where the torrent-foam falls,
...

Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank,
Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!
Quenched youth, and is that thy purse?
...

Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
All radiantly the moon's own night
Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
Our shadows down the highway white
...

What soul would bargain for a cure that brings
Contempt the nobler agony to kill?
Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
...

I.

Or shall we run with Artemis
Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?
...

O might I load my arms with thee,
Like that young lover of Romance
Who loved and gained so gloriously
The fair Princess of France!
...