(12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909 / Portsmouth, England)

poet George Meredith
#398 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''Cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers.''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British author. Clara Middleton, quoting Mr. Whitford, in The Egoist, ch. 7 (1879). Clara adds: "It seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves."
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  • ''As the clouds the clouds chase;
    And we go,
    And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
    Even we,
    Even so.''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Dirge in Woods (l. 11-15). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''Not a breath of wild air;
    Still as the mosses that glow
    On the flooring and over the lines''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Dirge in Woods (l. 3-5). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''The pine-tree drops its dead;
    They are quiet, as under the sea.''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Dirge in Woods (l. 7-8). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
    So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
    Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring
    Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Love in the Valley (l. 37-40). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
    Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Love in the Valley (l. 15-16). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
    I would speak my heart out heaven is my need.''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Love in the Valley (l. 81-82). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
    Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Love in the Valley (l. 47-48). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose,
    Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend
    Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British poet. Lucifer in Starlight (l. 1-3). . . The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett (1978) Yale University Press 1.
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  • ''Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
    Look we for any kinship with the stars.
    Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
    And the great price we paid for it full worth:
    We have it only when we are half earth.
    Little avails that coinage to the old!''
    George Meredith (1828-1909), British author. Modern Love, Sonnet 4 (1862). Cecil Day Lewis, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, wrote of this extract in his Introduction to the 1948 edition of the volume, that it was not originality that made it memorable, "it is a commonplace, whose force we are at last made to feel, through and through, by the inner conviction and the expressive grandeur of its utterance."
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Juggling Jerry

Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:
Juggler, constable, king, must bow.
One that outjuggles all's been spying
Long to have me, and he has me now.

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