Читать книгу Poems. Volume 3 - George Meredith - Страница 2

A revelation came on Jane,

The widow of a labouring swain:

And first her body trembled sharp,

Then all the woman was a harp

With winds along the strings; she heard,

Though there was neither tone nor word.

For past our hearing was the air,

Beyond our speaking what it bare,

And she within herself had sight

Of heaven at work to cleanse outright,

To make of her a mansion fit

For angel hosts inside to sit.

They entered, and forthwith entranced,

Her body braced, her members danced;

Surprisingly the woman leapt;

And countenance composed she kept:

As gossip neighbours in the lane

Declared, who saw and pitied Jane.

These knew she had been reading books,

The which was witnessed by her looks

Of late: she had a mania

For mad folk in America,

And said for sure they led the way,

But meat and beer were meant to stay.

That she had visited a fair,

Had seen a gauzy lady there,

Alive with tricks on legs alone,

As good as wings, was also known:

And longwhiles in a sullen mood,

Before her jumping, Jane would brood.

A good knee’s height, they say, she sprang;

Her arms and feet like those who hang:

As if afire the body sped,

And neither pair contributed.

She jumped in silence: she was thought

A corpse to resurrection caught.

The villagers were mostly dazed;

They jeered, they wondered, and they praised.

’Twas guessed by some she was inspired,

And some would have it she had hired

An engine in her petticoats,

To turn their wits and win their votes.

Her first was Winny Earnes, a kind

Of woman not to dance inclined;

But she went up, entirely won,

Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done;

And once a vixen wild for speech,

She found the better way to preach.

No long time after, Jane was seen

Directing jumps at Daddy Green;

And that old man, to watch her fly,

Had eyebrows made of arches high;

Till homeward he likewise did hop,

Oft calling on himself to stop!

It was a scene when man and maid,

Abandoning all other trade,

And careless of the call to meals,

Went jumping at the woman’s heels.

By dozens they were counted soon,

Without a sound to tell their tune.

Along the roads they came, and crossed

The fields, and o’er the hills were lost,

And in the evening reappeared;

Then short like hobbled horses reared,

And down upon the grass they plumped:

Alone their Jane to glory jumped.

At morn they rose, to see her spring

All going as an engine thing;

And lighter than the gossamer

She led the bobbers following her,

Past old acquaintances, and where

They made the stranger stupid stare.

When turnips were a filling crop,

In scorn they jumped a butcher’s shop:

Or, spite of threats to flog and souse,

They jumped for shame a public-house:

And much their legs were seized with rage

If passing by the vicarage.

The tightness of a hempen rope

Their bodies got; but laundry soap

Not handsomer can rub the skin

For token of the washed within.

Occasionally coughers cast

A leg aloft and coughed their last.

The weaker maids and some old men,

Requiring rafters for the pen

On rainy nights, were those who fell.

The rest were quite a miracle,

Refreshed as you may search all round

On Club-feast days and cry, Not found!

For these poor innocents, that slept

Against the sky, soft women wept:

For never did they any theft;

’Twas known when they their camping left,

And jumped the cold out of their rags;

In spirit rich as money-bags.

They jumped the question, jumped reply;

And whether to insist, deny,

Reprove, persuade, they jumped in ranks

Or singly, straight the arms to flanks,

And straight the legs, with just a knee

For bending in a mild degree.

The villagers might call them mad;

An endless holiday they had,

Of pleasure in a serious work:

They taught by leaps where perils lurk,

And with the lambkins practised sports

For ’scaping Satan’s pounds and quarts.

It really seemed on certain days,

When they bobbed up their Lord to praise,

And bobbing up they caught the glance

Of light, our secret is to dance,

And hold the tongue from hindering peace;

To dance out preacher and police.

Those flies of boys disturbed them sore

On Sundays and when daylight wore:

With withies cut from hedge or copse,

They treated them as whipping-tops,

And flung big stones with cruel aim;

Yet all the flock jumped on the same.

For what could persecution do

To worry such a blessed crew,

On whom it was as wind to fire,

Which set them always jumping higher?

The parson and the lawyer tried,

By meek persistency defied.

But if they bore, they could pursue

As well, and this the Bishop too;

When inner warnings proved him plain

The chase for Jump-to-glory Jane.

She knew it by his being sent

To bless the feasting in the tent.

Not less than fifty years on end,

The Squire had been the Bishop’s friend:

And his poor tenants, harmless ones,

With souls to save! fed not on buns,

But angry meats: she took her place

Outside to show the way to grace.

In apron suit the Bishop stood;

The crowding people kindly viewed.

A gaunt grey woman he saw rise

On air, with most beseeching eyes:

And evident as light in dark

It was, she set to him for mark.

Her highest leap had come: with ease

She jumped to reach the Bishop’s knees:

Compressing tight her arms and lips,

She sought to jump the Bishop’s hips:

Her aim flew at his apron-band,

That he might see and understand.

The mild inquiry of his gaze

Was altered to a peaked amaze,

At sight of thirty in ascent,

To gain his notice clearly bent:

And greatly Jane at heart was vexed

By his ploughed look of mind perplexed.

In jumps that said, Beware the pit!

More eloquent than speaking it—

That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast;

The heated nose on face of ghost,

Which comes of drinking: up and o’er

The flesh with me! did Jane implore.

She jumped him high as huntsmen go

Across the gate; she jumped him low,

To coax him to begin and feel

His infant steps returning, peel

His mortal pride, exposing fruit,

And off with hat and apron suit.

We need much patience, well she knew,

And out and out, and through and through,

When we would gentlefolk address,

However we may seek to bless:

At times they hide them like the beasts

From sacred beams; and mostly priests.

He gave no sign of making bare,

Nor she of faintness or despair.

Inflamed with hope that she might win,

If she but coaxed him to begin,

She used all arts for making fain;

The mother with her babe was Jane.

Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not

Her business, waved her from the spot.

Encircled by the men of might,

The head of Jane, like flickering light,

As in a charger, they beheld

Ere she was from the park expelled.

Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,

Did Jane around communicate:

For that the moment when began

The holy but mistaken man,

In view of light, to take his lift,

They cut him from her charm adrift!

And he was lost: a banished face

For ever from the ways of grace,

Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.

They saw the Bishop’s wavering sprite

Within her look, at come and go,

Long after he had caused her woe.

Her greying eyes (until she sank

At Fredsham on the wayside bank,

Like cinder heaps that whitened lie

From coals that shot the flame to sky)

Had glassy vacancies, which yearned

For one in memory discerned.

May those who ply the tongue that cheats,

And those who rush to beer and meats,

And those whose mean ambition aims

At palaces and titled names,

Depart in such a cheerful strain

As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!

Her end was beautiful: one sigh.

She jumped a foot when it was nigh.

A lily in a linen clout

She looked when they had laid her out.

It is a lily-light she bears

For England up the ladder-stairs.