Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
George Meredith. 18281909772. Love in the Valley
UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward, | |
Couch’d with her arms behind her golden head, | |
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, | |
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. | |
Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, | 5 |
Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, | |
Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: | |
Then would she hold me and never let me go? | |
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, | |
Swift as the swallow along the river’s light | 10 |
Circleting the surface to meet his mirror’d winglets, | |
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. | |
Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, | |
Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, | |
She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, | 15 |
Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! | |
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, | |
Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, | |
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, | |
More love should I have, and much less care. | 20 |
When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror, | |
Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, | |
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, | |
I should miss but one for many boys and girls. | |
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows | 25 |
Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. | |
No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder: | |
Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. | |
Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure, | |
Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: | 30 |
Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones | |
Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. | |
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping | |
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. | |
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, | 35 |
Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. | |
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: | |
So were it with me if forgetting could be will’d. | |
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, | |
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it fill’d. | |
40 | |
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, | |
Arm in arm, all against the raying West, | |
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, | |
Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess’d. | |
Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking | 45 |
Whisper’d the world was; morning light is she. | |
Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless; | |
Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free. | |
Happy happy time, when the white star hovers | |
Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, | 50 |
Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, | |
Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew. | |
Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens | |
Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. | |
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; | 55 |
Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells. | |
Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting | |
Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, | |
Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter | |
Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. | 60 |
Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feather’d bosom | |
Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend | |
Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset | |
Rich, deep like love in beauty without end. | |
When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window | 65 |
Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, | |
Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily | |
Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. | |
When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle | |
In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, | 70 |
Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden-lily | |
Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. | |
Mother of the dews, dark eye-lash’d twilight, | |
Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim, | |
Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, | 75 |
Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. | |
Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet, | |
Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. | |
Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever | |
Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. | |
80 | |
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; | |
Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. | |
My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters, | |
Eyes the bent anemones, and hangs her hands. | |
Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, | 85 |
Coming the rose: and unaware a cry | |
Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, | |
Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. | |
Kerchief’d head and chin she darts between her tulips, | |
Streaming like a willow gray in arrowy rain: | 90 |
Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel | |
She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. | |
Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gateway: | |
She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. | |
So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder | 95 |
Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. | |
Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, | |
Train’d to stand in rows, and asking if they please. | |
I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones: | |
O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. | 100 |
You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, | |
Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, | |
They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, | |
You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way. | |
Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, | 105 |
Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. | |
Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine | |
Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. | |
Sweeter unpossess’d, have I said of her my sweetest? | |
Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, | 110 |
Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine | |
Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths. | |
Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades; | |
Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-gray leaf; | |
Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; | 115 |
Blue-neck’d the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf. | |
Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; | |
Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine: | |
Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, | |
Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. | |
120 | |
This I may know: her dressing and undressing | |
Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport | |
Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder | |
Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port | |
White sails furl; or on the ocean borders | 125 |
White sails lean along the waves leaping green. | |
Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight | |
Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. | |
Front door and back of the moss’d old farmhouse | |
Open with the morn, and in a breezy link | 130 |
Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadow’d orchard, | |
Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. | |
Busy in the grass the early sun of summer | |
Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes | |
Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: | 135 |
Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats! | |
Cool was the woodside; cool as her white diary | |
Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, | |
Cricketing below, rush’d brown and red with sunshine; | |
O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! | 140 |
Spying from the farm, herself she fetch’d a pitcher | |
Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. | |
Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, | |
Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laugh’d and lean’d her cheek. | |
Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof | 145 |
Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. | |
Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway | |
Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. | |
Cows flap a show tail knee-deep in the river, | |
Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. | 150 |
Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, | |
Lighting may come, straight rains and tiger sky. | |
O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! | |
O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! | |
O the treasure-tresses one another over | 155 |
Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! | |
Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet | |
Quick amid the wheat-ears: wound about the waist, | |
Gather’d, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness! | |
O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! | |
160 | |
Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops, | |
Clipp’d by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: | |
Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise, | |
Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. | |
Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree | 165 |
Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I. | |
Here may life on death or death on life be painted. | |
Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die! | |
Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber | |
Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. | 170 |
‘When she was a tiny,’ one agèd woman quavers, | |
Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. | |
Faults she had once as she learn’d to run and tumbled: | |
Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. | |
Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy | 175 |
Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet. | |
Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, | |
Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise | |
High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; | |
Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. | 180 |
Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming, | |
Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.— | |
Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, | |
Arms up, she dropp’d: our souls were in our names. | |
Soon will she lie like a white frost sunrise. | 185 |
Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, | |
Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, | |
Felt the girdle loosen’d, seen the tresses fly. | |
Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. | |
Swift with the to-morrow, green-wing’d Spring! | 190 |
Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants, | |
Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing. | |
Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April | |
Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you | |
Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, | 195 |
Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: | |
Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry: | |
Fair as in image my seraph love appears | |
Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids: | |
Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. | |
200 | |
Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, | |
I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. | |
Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, | |
Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. | |
Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; | 205 |
Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; | |
Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: | |
All seem to know what is for heaven alone. |