Poems Author:George Meredith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TO THE COMIC SPIRIT Sword of Common Sense !— Our surest gift: the sacred chain Of man to man : firm earth for trust In structures vowed to permanence... more » :— Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain ! Implacable perforce of just; With that good treasure in defence, Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain Since first men planted foot and hand was king:Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve To wield thy double edge, retort Or hold the deadlier reserve, And through thy victim's weapon sting : Thine is the service, thine the sport This shifty heart of ours to hunt Across its webs and round the many a ring Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster's grunt;— Once lion of our desert's trodden weeds; And but for thy straight finger at the yoke, Again to be the lordly paw, , Naming his appetites his needs, Behind a decorative cloak : Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law We read upon that building's architrave In the mind's firmament, by men upraised With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed, Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw, Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn, Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang; Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot, Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise, Seen are the pits of the disrupter, seen His rebel agitation at our root: Thou hast him out of hawking eyes; Nor ever morning of the clang Young Echo sped on hill from horn In forest blown when scent was keen Off earthy dews besprinkling blades Of covert grass more merrily rang The yelp of chase down alleys green, Forth ...« less