Читать книгу Poems. Volume 1 - George Meredith - Страница 26

The silence of preluded song—

Æolian silence charms the woods;

Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings

Are waiting for the master’s touch

To sweep them into storms of joy,

Stands mute and whispers not; the birds

Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,

Save here and there a chirp or tweet,

That utters fear or anxious love,

Or when the ouzel sends a swift

Half warble, shrinking back again

His golden bill, or when aloud

The storm-cock warns the dusking hills

And villages and valleys round:

For lo, beneath those ragged clouds

That skirt the opening west, a stream

Of yellow light and windy flame

Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky

Begins to gloom, and o’er the ground

A moan of coming blasts creeps low

And rustles in the crisping grass;

Till suddenly with mighty arms

Outspread, that reach the horizon round,

The great South-West drives o’er the earth,

And loosens all his roaring robes

Behind him, over heath and moor.

He comes upon the neck of night,

Like one that leaps a fiery steed

Whose keen black haunches quivering shine

With eagerness and haste, that needs

No spur to make the dark leagues fly!

Whose eyes are meteors of speed;

Whose mane is as a flashing foam;

Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks;—

He comes, and while his growing gusts,

Wild couriers of his reckless course,

Are whistling from the daggered gorse,

And hurrying over fern and broom,

Midway, far off, he feigns to halt

And gather in his streaming train.

Now, whirring like an eagle’s wing

Preparing for a wide blue flight;

Now, flapping like a sail that tacks

And chides the wet bewildered mast;

Now, screaming like an anguish’d thing

Chased close by some down-breathing beak;

Now, wailing like a breaking heart,

That will not wholly break, but hopes

With hope that knows itself in vain;

Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;

Now, cooing like a woodland dove;

Now, up again in roar and wrath

High soaring and wide sweeping; now,

With sudden fury dashing down

Full-force on the awaiting woods.

Long waited there, for aspens frail

That tinkle with a silver bell,

To warn the Zephyr of their love,

When danger is at hand, and wake

The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all

Their prophet harmony of leaves,

Had caught his earliest windward thought,

And told it trembling; naked birk

Down showering her dishevelled hair,

And like a beauty yielding up

Her fate to all the elements,

Had swayed in answer; hazels close,

Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,

And briared brakes that line the dells

With shaggy beetling brows, had sung

Shrill music, while the tattered flaws

Tore over them, and now the whole

Tumultuous concords, seized at once

With savage inspiration,—pine,

And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,

And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave

And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,

And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,

And bend their stems, and bow their heads,

And grind, and groan, and lion-like

Roar to the echo-peopled hills

And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry

With harsh delight, and cave-like call

With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill

With mighty melodies, sublime,

From clumps of column’d pines that wave

A lofty anthem to the sky,

Fit music for a prophet’s soul—

And like an ocean gathering power,

And murmuring deep, while down below

Reigns calm profound;—not trembling now

The aspens, but like freshening waves

That fall upon a shingly beach;—

And round the oak a solemn roll

Of organ harmony ascends,

And in the upper foliage sounds

A symphony of distant seas.

The voice of nature is abroad

This night; she fills the air with balm;

Her mystery is o’er the land;

And who that hears her now and yields

His being to her yearning tones,

And seats his soul upon her wings,

And broadens o’er the wind-swept world

With her, will gather in the flight

More knowledge of her secret, more

Delight in her beneficence,

Than hours of musing, or the lore

That lives with men could ever give!

Nor will it pass away when morn

Shall look upon the lulling leaves,

And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,

Dreams o’er the paths of peaceful shade;—

For every elemental power

Is kindred to our hearts, and once

Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,

Once taken to the unfettered sense,

Once claspt into the naked life,

The union is eternal.