AT DINNER SHE IS HOSTESS.
AT dinner she is hostess, I am host.
Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
The topic over intellectual deeps
In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball.
It is in truth a most contagious game:
Hiding the skeleton shall be its name.
Such play as this the devils might appall!
But here’s the greater wonder; in that we,
Enamoured of our acting and our wits,
Admire each other like true hypocrites.
Warm lighted glances, Love’s Ephemeræ,
Shoot gaily o’er the dishes and the wine.
We waken envy of our happy lot.
Fast, sweet, and golden, shows our marriage-knot.
Dear guests, you now have seen Love’s corpse-light shine!
George Meredith.
LOVE WITHIN THE LOVER’S BREAST.
LOVE within the lover’s breast
Burns like Hesper in the West,
O’er the ashes of the sun,
Till the day and night are done;
Then, when dawn drives up his car—
Lo! it is the morning star.
Love! thy love pours down on mine,
As the sunlight on the vine,
As the snow rill on the vale,
As the salt breeze on the sail;
As the song unto the bird
On my lips thy name is heard.
As a dewdrop on the rose
In thy heart my passion glows;
As a skylark to the sky,
Up into thy breast I fly;
As a sea-shell of the sea
Ever shall I sing of thee.
George Meredith.
A DEAD MARCH.
PLAY me a march low-toned and slow,—a march for a silent tread,
Fit for the wandering feet of one who dreams of the silent dead,
Lonely, between the bones below and the souls that are overhead.
Here for a while they smiled and sang, alive in the interspace,
Here with the grass beneath the foot, and the stars above the face,
Now are their feet beneath the grass, and whither has flown their grace?
Who shall assure us whence they come or tell us the way they go?
Verily, life with them was joy, and now they have left us, woe.
Once they were not, and now they are not, and this is the sum we know.