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Home  »  The English Poets  »  The Spirit of Shakespeare

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

George Meredith (1828–1909)

The Spirit of Shakespeare

I
THY greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsoured

He knew thy sons. He probed from hell to hell

Of human passions, but of love deflowered

His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.

Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips,

The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails

Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips,

Yet full of speech and intershifting tales,

Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh

We feel is thine: broad as ten thousand beeves

At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff

From grain, bid sick Philosophy’s last leaves

Whirl, if they have no response—they enforced

To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced.

II
How smiles he at a generation ranked

In gloomy noddings over life! They pass.

Not he to feed upon a breast unthanked,

Or eye a beauteous face in a cracked glass.

But he can spy that little twist of brain

Which moved some weighty leader of the blind,

Unwitting ’twas the goad of personal pain,

To view in curst eclipse our Mother’s mind,

And show us of some rigid harridan

The wretched bondmen till the end of time.

O lived the Master now to paint us Man,

That little twist of brain would ring a chime

Of whence it came and what it caused, to start

Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart.