<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=396941" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Thrush In February</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I know him, February's thrush,<br>And loud at eve he valentines<br>On sprays that paw the naked bush<br>Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now ere the foreign singer thrills<br>Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours,<br>A herald of the million bills;<br>And heed him not, the loss is yours.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My study, flanked with ivied fir<br>And budded beech with dry leaves curled,<br>Perched over yew and juniper,<br>He neighbours, piping to his world:-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wooded pathways dank on brown,<br>The branches on grey cloud a web,<br>The long green roller of the down,<br>An image of the deluge-ebb:-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And farther, they may hear along<br>The stream beneath the poplar row.<br>By fits, like welling rocks, the song<br>Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But most he loves to front the vale<br>When waves of warm South-western rains<br>Have left our heavens clear in pale,<br>With faintest beck of moist red veins:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Vermilion wings, by distance held<br>To pause aflight while fleeting swift:<br>And high aloft the pearl inshelled<br>Her lucid glow in glow will lift;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A little south of coloured sky;<br>Directing, gravely amorous,<br>The human of a tender eye<br>Through pure celestial on us:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Remote, not alien; still, not cold;<br>Unraying yet, more pearl than star;<br>She seems a while the vale to hold<br>In trance, and homelier makes the far.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes,<br>An orb of lustre quits the height;<br>And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths<br>The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His Island voice then shall you hear,<br>Nor ever after separate<br>From such a twilight of the year<br>Advancing to the vernal gate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He sings me, out of Winter's throat,<br>The young time with the life ahead;<br>And my young time his leaping note<br>Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Imbedded in a land of greed,<br>Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's,<br>My care was but to soothe my need;<br>At peace among the littleworths.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To light and song my yearning aimed;<br>To that deep breast of song and light<br>Which men have barrenest proclaimed;<br>As 'tis to senses pricked with fright.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So mine are these new fruitings rich<br>The simple to the common brings;<br>I keep the youth of souls who pitch<br>Their joy in this old heart of things:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who feel the Coming young as aye,<br>Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough;<br>Alive for life, awake to die;<br>One voice to cheer the seedling Now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Full lasting is the song, though he,<br>The singer, passes: lasting too,<br>For souls not lent in usury,<br>The rapture of the forward view.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With that I bear my senses fraught<br>Till what I am fast shoreward drives.<br>They are the vessel of the Thought.<br>The vessel splits, the Thought survives.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nought else are we when sailing brave,<br>Save husks to raise and bid it burn.<br>Glimpse of its livingness will wave<br>A light the senses can discern</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Across the river of the death,<br>Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird<br>Of promise! bird of happy breath!<br>I hear, I would the City heard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The City of the smoky fray;<br>A prodded ox, it drags and moans:<br>Its Morrow no man's child; its Day<br>A vulture's morsel beaked to bones.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It strives without a mark for strife;<br>It feasts beside a famished host:<br>The loose restraint of wanton life,<br>That threatened penance in the ghost!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet there our battle urges; there<br>Spring heroes many: issuing thence,<br>Names that should leave no vacant air<br>For fresh delight in confidence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life was to them the bag of grain,<br>And Death the weedy harrow's tooth.<br>Those warriors of the sighting brain<br>Give worn Humanity new youth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our song and star are they to lead<br>The tidal multitude and blind<br>From bestial to the higher breed<br>By fighting souls of love divined,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They scorned the ventral dream of peace,<br>Unknown in nature. This they knew:<br>That life begets with fair increase<br>Beyond the flesh, if life be true.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just reason based on valiant blood,<br>The instinct bred afield would match<br>To pipe thereof a swelling flood,<br>Were men of Earth made wise in watch.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though now the numbers count as drops<br>An urn might bear, they father Time.<br>She shapes anew her dusty crops;<br>Her quick in their own likeness climb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Of their own force do they create;<br>They climb to light, in her their root.<br>Your brutish cry at muffled fate<br>She smites with pangs of worse than brute.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears<br>A Mother whom no cry can melt;<br>But read her past desires and fears,<br>The letters on her breast are spelt.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A slayer, yea, as when she pressed<br>Her savage to the slaughter-heaps,<br>To sacrifice she prompts her best:<br>She reaps them as the sower reaps.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But read her thought to speed the race,<br>And stars rush forth of blackest night:<br>You chill not at a cold embrace<br>To come, nor dread a dubious might.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her double visage, double voice,<br>In oneness rise to quench the doubt.<br>This breath, her gift, has only choice<br>Of service, breathe we in or out.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand<br>Led our wild steps from slimy rock<br>To yonder sweeps of gardenland,<br>We breathe but to be sword or block.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The sighting brain her good decree<br>Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith,<br>By reason hourly fed, that she,<br>To some the clod, to some the wraith,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.<br>Flame, stream, are we, in mid career<br>From torrent source, delirious dream,<br>To heaven-reflecting currents clear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And why the sons of Strength have been<br>Her cherished offspring ever; how<br>The Spirit served by her is seen<br>Through Law; perusing love will show.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Love born of knowledge, love that gains<br>Vitality as Earth it mates,<br>The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,<br>The Life, the Death, illuminates.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For love we Earth, then serve we all;<br>Her mystic secret then is ours:<br>We fall, or view our treasures fall,<br>Unclouded, as beholds her flowers</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,<br>Enrobed in morning's mounted fire,<br>When lowly, with a broken neck,<br>The crocus lays her cheek to mire.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=George+Meredith">George Meredith</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=396941" data-title="The Thrush In February de George Meredith" data-description="I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines. Now ere the foreign singer thrills Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours, A herald of the million bills; A..."></div> </div> </div>

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