Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads
     The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed. 
     How wrought they in their zenith?  ’Tis not writ;
     Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read: 
     Have they but held her laws and nature dear,
     They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. 
     More prizes she her beasts than this high breed
     Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.

     Society

     Historic be the survey of our kind,
     And how their brave Society took shape. 
     Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape,
     The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find,
     Who, with some jars in harmony, combined,
     Their primal instincts taming, to escape
     The brawl indecent, and hot passions drape. 
     Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind. 
     Thus entered they the field of milder beasts,
     Which in some sort of civil order graze,
     And do half-homage to the God of Laws. 
     But are they still for their old ravenous feasts,
     Earth gives the edifice they build no base: 
     They spring another flood of fangs and claws.

     Winter heavens

     Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
     Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. 
     It is a night to make the heavens our home
     More than the nest whereto apace we strive. 
     Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
     In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. 
     They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: 
     The living throb in me, the dead revive. 
     Yon mantle clothes us:  there, past mortal breath,
     Life glistens on the river of the death. 
     It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
     Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
     Of radiance, the radiance enrings: 
     And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.

     Poems by George Meredith—­Volume 3

     [This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” edition
     by David Price]

     A stave of roving Tim
     (addressed to certain friendly tramps.)

     I

     The wind is East, the wind is West,
     Blows in and out of haven;
     The wind that blows is the wind that’s best,
     And croak, my jolly raven! 
     If here awhile we jigged and laughed,
     The like we will do yonder;
     For he’s the man who masters a craft,
     And light as a lord can wander. 
     So, foot the measure, Roving Tim,
     And croak, my jolly raven! 
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     II

     You live in rows of snug abodes,
     With gold, maybe, for counting;
     And mine’s the beck of the rainy roads
     Against the sun a-mounting. 
     I take the day as it