A Reading of Life, Other Poems   By: George Meredith (1828-1909)

A Reading Of Life

Contents:

A Reading of Life The Vital Choice A Reading of Life With The Huntress A Reading of Life With The Persuader A Reading of Life The Test of Manhood The Cageing of Ares The Night Walk The Hueless Love Song In The Songless Union In Disseverance The Burden of Strength The Main Regret Alternation Hawarden At the Close Forest History A Garden Idyl Foresight And Patience The Invective of Achilles The Invective of Achilles V. 225 Marshalling of the Achaians Agamemnon in the Fight Paris and Diomedes Hypnos on Ida Clash in Arms of the Achaians And Trojans The Horses of Achilles The Mares of the Camargue

Poem: A Reading of Life The Vital Choice

I.

Or shall we run with Artemis Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? Both are mighty; Both give bliss; Each can torture if divided; Each claims worship undivided, In her wake would have us wallow.

II.

Youth must offer on bent knees Homage unto one or other; Earth, the mother, This decrees; And unto the pallid Scyther Either points us shun we either Shun or too devoutly follow.

Poem: A Reading of Life With The Huntress

Through the water eye of night, Midway between eve and dawn, See the chase, the rout, the flight In deep forest; oread, faun, Goat foot, antlers laid on neck; Ravenous all the line for speed. See yon wavy sparkle beck Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead. Down her course a serpent star Coils and shatters at her heels; Peals the horn exulting, peals Plaintive, is it near or far. Huntress, arrowy to pursue, In and out of woody glen, Under cliffs that tear the blue, Over torrent, over fen, She and forest, where she skims Feathery, darken and relume: Those are her white lightning limbs Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. Mountains hear her and call back, Shrewd with night: a frosty wail Distant: her the emerald vale Folds, and wonders in her track. Now her retinue is lean, Many rearward; streams the chase Eager forth of covert; seen One hot tide the rapturous race. Quiver charged and crescent crowned, Up on a flash the lighted mound Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft Strung to barb with archer's craft, Legs like plaited lyre chords, feet Songs to see, past pitch of sweet. Fearful swiftness they outrun, Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, Challenge, charge of tusks elude: Theirs the dance to tame the rude; Beast, and beast in manhood tame, Follow we their silver flame. Pride of flesh from bondage free, Reaping vigour of its waste, Marks her servitors, and she Sanctifies the unembraced. Nought of perilous she reeks; Valour clothes her open breast; Sweet beyond the thrill of sex; Hallowed by the sex confessed. Huntress arrowy to pursue, Colder she than sunless dew, She, that breath of upper air; Ay, but never lyrist sang, Draught of Bacchus never sprang Blood the bliss of Gods to share, High o'er sweep of eagle wings, Like the run with her, when rings Clear her rally, and her dart, In the forest's cavern heart, Tells of her victorious aim. Then is pause and chatter, cheer, Laughter at some satyr lame, Looks upon the fallen deer, Measuring his noble crest; Here a favourite in her train, Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; All applauded. Shall she reign Worshipped? O to be with her there! She, that breath of nimble air, Lifts the breast to giant power. Maid and man, and man and maid, Who each other would devour Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, There are comrades, led by her, Maid preserver, man maker.

Poem: A Reading of Life With The Persuader